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Burghölzli-Zürich, 29 August 1907
Dear Professor Freud,
Heartiest thanks for your friendly letter! Last time I got a bit scared because I thought you had taken my long silence amiss. One of my bad qualities is that I can never do two things at once. A letter to you comes into the category of “things.”
Dr. Adler, who recently asked me something technical, wrote that you are not feeling too well. You haven't said anything about it to me. I hope it is only a passing indisposition.
May we not hope to welcome you in Switzerland this autumn? For our Clinic it would be a feast and red-letter day, and it would make me extraordinarily happy to see and hear you again. I return from Amsterdam on September 10 and can then give you a report on my apostolic journey.
I fear I have painted Abraham (who is what his name implies) in too dark colours. Of his antecedents I know nothing whatever—which is characteristic. The emotional rapport is missing but I don't feel it's my fault. A. often has mild ideas of persecution about me. His wife1 comes from Berlin, and suffers from Berlinese autoerotism with all its psychological consequences. That rubs off on A.
Your idea that feeling is the perception of an instinctual cathexis is excellent and seems to me to simplify many things enormously. If you can't make anything of Bleuler's “ego” in his Affectivity you can safely lump it together with my conception of the ego-complex.2 They both amount to nothing and are really only “surface psychology.” But in practice we must maintain contact with the surface, for didactic reasons. I am very grateful to you for formulating your view of the role of sexuality; it is much what I expected.
I shall be in Amsterdam from September 1-10. Address: Hôtel de l'Europe, Doelenstraat.
I hope your prophecy will be fulfilled and that someone will be there besides the opposition.
With best regards,