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19 April 1908, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 191
Dear friend,
Happy Easter! Hard feelings must not be nursed. If I was cranky and seemed so, there is much more room—in this case—for a somatic than for a psychogenic aetiology. I am so exhausted by work and lack of recreation that I shall surely make the same impression on you in Salzburg. What I mean is I am not at all angry with you. My letter is being written under the impression of my second reading of your Content of the Psychoses, for which work I feel great affection. It gives me a picture of you from several different angles. It has in it a great deal of what I esteem in you, not only your insight but also your fine artistic feeling and the seeds of greatness. It stands in marked contrast to a manuscript by your Berlin rival (A.), which is to occupy my fourth number,2 staunch in its support but lacking just that spark (here the ucs. of both writer and receiver smile), and also to your collaboration with Bleuler. In my fatigue I failed to bring out the true constellation; my displeasure was so much more evident than my pleasure, which struck no chord in me, feeling as I did. This, I believe, was the situation, from which I did indeed exclude your Amsterdam report; of course I could equally well have expressed my gratitude to you for putting such zeal into so difficult and dangerous a task. Only the sentence about child hysteria struck me as incorrect. The conditions here are the same, probably because every thrust of growth creates the same conditions as the great thrust of puberty (every increase in libido, I mean). After all, it has never been my habit to reproach you with your partial disagreements, but rather to be pleased with your share of agreement. I know it will take you time to catch up with my experience of the past fifteen years. I am rather annoyed with Bleuler for his willingness to accept a psychology without sexuality, which leaves everything hanging in mid-air. In the sexual processes we have the ind