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Küsnach bei Zürich, 14 December 1909
Dear Professor Freud,
Your letter came yesterday evening and I am replying at once. Your impressions of Binswanger's paper tally with my own, though I haven't dared to say so out loud. I too was annoyed with B. for pushing the business end so blatantly to the fore; his obeisances in various directions obviously amount to just that. Oh well, he has a sanatorium round his neck, so I suppose we must stretch a point. Besides, there is a colossal and apparently still unresolved father complex rumbling in his depths.
May I expect something from you for the January issue of the Jahrbuch? Contributions are coming from Maeder, Abraham, Sadger, Pfister, Riklin and me. So space is already tight. Pfister or Riklin could be held in reserve if necessary.
So far as I have heard, Ferenczi's paper1 is greatly appreciated here. He wrote me a very nice letter, so understanding and friendly that I probably sent him a very clumsy answer.2 Such letters should really be answered with a blank page,2a but that too would look unfriendly.
I have made some glosses on your Obsessional Neurosis. The notion that obsessional ideas are, by their very nature, regressive substitutes for action sounds very convincing to me. The formula for D. pr. ideas would be: regressive substitutes for reality. Both formulae, it seems to me, describe the main tendency very aptly. With reference to p. 415,3