Letter from Sigmund Freud to C. G. Jung, December 11, 1908

11 December 1908, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear friend,

By the same post you will receive an offprint of the “Sexual Theories of Children.”1 I can account for my delayed reaction—not a usual failing of mine—by overwork and indisposition. No need to look for an explanation on your side. The note of freedom in your letters since it is settled that you are to be your own master comes as an answer to my heartfelt wishes. You will see what a blessing it is to have no master over you. The conjunction—social liberation, birth of a son, paper on the father complex—suggests to me that you are at a crossroads in your life and have taken the right direction. My own fatherhood will not be a burden to you, there is little I can do for you, and I am accustomed to giving what I have.

I must say, your regret at being unable to play the ideal hero-father (“My father begot me and died”)2 struck me as very premature. The child will find you indispensable as a father for many many years, first in a positive, then in a negative sense! We are very glad that mother and child are doing so well. Is your wife nursing the baby herself? (Feminine curiosity.)

Deuticke tells me that he has already received the manuscript of the Jahrbuch. At the same time he has sent the second volume of my Collected Papers on the Theory of the Neuroses to the printer's; nothing in it will be new to you (except for two pages on hysterical attacks, which will also appear in Moll's journal).3 Business is worrying along in every respect, but my spirits do not always hold up. I have endured a good deal and need a bit of a let-up now and then.

I am so obsessed by the idea of a nuclear complex4 in neuroses such as is at the heart of the case of Little Herbert that I cannot make any headway. A recent observation tempted me to trace the poisoning complex, when it is present, back to the infant's interpretation of its mother's morning sickness. I also have some dim notions on the theory