Letter from Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, February 12, 1932

12 February 1932
81 Harley Street, London

Dear Professor,

I was very sorry to hear from Anna that she had had what sounded like a severe attack of influenza, but I hope that by now it has quite disappeared without leaving any sequelae. The older one gets the more one perceives the benefits of the summer and the more objection one has to the months from December to March!

I have sent to Eitingon my vote to hold a Congress this year but raised the possibility of its being held in a less expensive country than Switzerland.1 Storfer sent me the news of his resignation, but I know nothing about the cause. At all events we are lucky to have such a pleasant and reliable colleague as Martin in this post.2

Thank you for your answer to my letter about your Zeitschrift papers. You put your finger exactly on the misunderstanding to which I alluded. Your criticism of my supposedly wrong chronology was based on the very natural assumption that by ‘phallic phase’ I meant the same as you. And indeed at the time I also thought I did, otherwise I should of course have made the distinction clear. Now I see that I have wrongly taken for granted a distinction which I should certainly wish to establish—namely, between the ‘clitoritic phase’ (with, as you point out and I can confirm, its masculine impulses towards the mother) and the ‘phallic phase’ later on when the child has been brought into the problem of its relation to male beings and [after]3 has regressed defensively to the clitoris-phallus position. The latter we probably agree is much more secondary and komplexbedingt than the former. Whether all4 girls have a phase of clitoris primacy I do not know. It seems likely, but there is also the accompanying oral attitude to remember which perhaps in the more feminine type may equal or surpass the clitoris. So much for the present, but you have stimulated me to more work.

With kindest regards, also to your family

Yours always

Ernest Jones.