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1003 Seestrasse, Künach-Zürich,
Dear Professor Freud, 28 February 1911
Last Sunday, the day I could best have written to you, was clouded by a mighty hangover from the carnival. It was a propitiatory offering to the chthonic gods not to disturb my work.
Many thanks for the information about The Interpretation of Dreams. Pp. 128/129 (bottom) there is a passage where you make children's dreams an exception to the rule.1 Just how significant
children's dreams can be has been admirably documented by my Grethchen: she dreamt that her “little friend Hans had pulled his felt hat right down over his head (so that the head was hidden) and she had to swallow it.” Or she dreams of a wolf “that sits in the tunnel.” She is now 5 years old. The knowledge of foreskin and glans is remarkable. “Consequently” she was violently sick (at the age of 4) when her godfather was here with his fiancée. Grethe was terribly jealous.
I am very busy in my thoughts with the incest problem and have found splendid fantasies among my patients. Something should come of it.
I was very much interested in your announcement of a new dream-book, especially in the parallelism of our points of view. For me dream analysis is still one of the most difficult of our problems, and the most rewarding.
Now for the news! I need hardly say anything about the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. You will already have discovered our friend Schottänder in it.2 The Jones-Prince controversy is good.3 I shall provide the bass part in the Jahrbuch: I too have taken Prince by the ear and shown him that one does not do dream analysis like that. I hope you will approve of this independent sortie. I have made a thorough job of it—nothing but criticism. I am all for speaking out as soon as people start doing “positive” work, or rather, tinkering in our field. I won't be too gentle with Prince, especially after reading his incredibly arrogant reply to Jones.
One of my young pupils here, Dr. Lenz,4 is a voluntary worker with Geheimrat