You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Rome, 24 September 1910
Dear friend,
I am writing to you on a dark, cold, dismally rainy morning that reminds me of our November. This evening we are planning to leave the Eternal City for home. In the meantime you have no doubt become a father; I hope to find the best news of you waiting for me at home.
The trip has been very rich and has supplied several wish-fulfilments that my inner economy has long been in need of. Sicily is the most beautiful part of Italy and has preserved unique fragments of the Greek past, infantile reminiscences that make it possible to infer the nuclear complex. The first week on the island was delightful, the second, because of the continuous scirocco, a hard trial for poor Konrad. Now at last we feel that we have come through it all: the scirocco and the threat of cholera and malaria. September is not the right time of year to enjoy the beauty here. My travelling companion is a dear fellow, but dreamy in a disturbing kind of way, and his attitude towards me is infantile. He never stops admiring me, which I don't like, and is probably sharply critical of me in his unconscious when I am taking it easy. He has been too passive and receptive, letting everything be done for him like a woman, and I really haven't got enough homosexuality in me to accept him as one. These trips arouse a great longing for a real woman. A number of scientific notions I brought with me have combined to form a paper on paranoia,1 which still lacks an end, but takes quite a step forward in explaining the mechanism of the choice of neurosis. I don't know if I shall be able to finish it before the end of October.
Monday, 26 Sept. 10
Now I am at home and rather tired from the trip and the change of scene. Still, I want to answer your letter and not delay my congratulations on the birth of your third daughter2 and my kind regards to your wife.
I suggest patience with Bleuler. You know how contrary such an attitude is to my temperament, but … his name on the Jahrbuch