Letter from Sigmund Freud to C. G. Jung, June 9, 1910

9 June 1910, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear friend,

I have noticed your new writing paper and congratulate you on it. In the last few days I have sent you several silent parcels;1 but I should have liked to answer your letter of 2 June, to which I am now reacting, more promptly if it had been possible. I take a keen interest in young Honegger and am glad to speak of him, since you asked me for my “grandfatherly” opinion.

Grandfathers are seldom harsh and I doubt if I have even been so as a father. It is unreasonable of you, I think, to expect his working methods to be as independent of the human libido as yours: we agree that he belongs to a later generation, that he has had little experience of love thus far, and is in general of softer stuff than you. We would not want him to be a copy of yourself. He will be far more useful to you as he is. He possesses a fine receptivity, psychological flair, and a good sense of the “basic language.”2 He seems to be exceedingly devoted to you, and his personal value is further enhanced by the present situation, in which you must stand up to our opponents in the Zürich camp. Why then don't you take him as he is and train him on the basis of his own nature, rather than try to mould him to an ideal that is alien to him?

Our opponents are suffering keenly from our treatment of them; they do not merit our indignation. Keep silent and go on working—that's all we have to do.

What Schottländer is telling people about his experience with me must be very interesting. I make no bones about denying it all unheard. Incidentally, speaking of one of my patients who spent some time with him, he told me things that my questioning of the very decent young man and his mother proved to be the crude lies I had supposed. I wanted to send him this supplement to his self-analysis in a letter, but his old school-friends in the Vienna circle pleaded with me not to.