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26 January 1930
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear Jones,
At last a day when I can give you my long-postponed reply. I just finished a letter to Brill, in which I apologized in full for the same neglect by mentioning everything I have had to do these last few weeks. For you I add further the admission of my growing love for idleness.
Your paper “Fear, Guilt and Hate”1 I have read; incidentally, a second time for this letter. I agree with your assessment. I cannot see that it takes the concept of anxiety beyond my viewpoint in “Hemmung, Symptom und Angst,” but I find the description of the three “layers”2 and the emphasis on the regressive nature of the last formation very pertinent and instructive. As a whole, and in individual points, I see a far-reaching correspondence of our views on these difficult questions. In the phenomena of traumatic primal anxiety, I should like to distinguish an automatic, that is, economically enforced reaction which—as with everything—later finds an appropriate application. To be sure, this paper of yours does not touch on the problem of the aggressive or death drive. The details proposed in your letter seem to me inadequate. I can no longer manage without assuming this basic drive, either psychologically or biologically, and I think one need not give up hope that you will yet find the way to it.
Of course all the factual news in your Rundbrief interested me very much. You know that Anna declined the pressing invitation to attend the Congress for Mental Hygiene in May; she did so without my direct influence, but I believe she did the right thing. Her time will come later, when everything is more favorable. I have no confidence in Fr. Williams, who is a student of Rank's, and in my reply to his letter, which emphasized the invitation to Anna, I even told him so point-blank.
It pleased me very much that you are in broad agreement with the Unbehagen. To be sure, it is also drawn from a shared source; as you are an expert on my writings (cf. the in