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1003 Seestrasse, Küsnach-Zürich,
25 February 1912
Dear Professor Freud,
Many thanks for your friendly letter. I am most interested in the experimental confirmation of dream analysis. Where can one read about it?
Little to report from Zürich, and little of it pleasant. Pfister has no doubt told you how badly things are going with him. It may even cost him his job. I fear he is too optimistic, too trusting, in spite of warnings. Our opponents are wont to pick on the vulnerable spots; and one of the weak points in our armour is Pfister, whom they can hurt by spreading rumours. Those people are vermin that shun the light.
The students are acquitting themselves splendidly. Recently I lectured to about 150 students on ΨA with great success. A more noteworthy news item is the founding of a lay organization for ΨA.1 It has about 20 members and only analysed persons are accepted. The organization was founded at the request of former patients. The rapport among its members is loudly acclaimed. I myself have not yet attended a meeting. The chairman is a member of the ΨA Society. The experiment seems to me interesting from the standpoint of the social application of ΨA to education.
I think I am not wrong in suspecting that you rather resent my remissness as a correspondent. In this regard my behaviour is indeed a little irresponsible, as I have allowed all my libido to disappear into my work. On the other hand I don't think you need have any apprehensions about my protracted and invisible sojourn in the “religious-libidinal cloud.” I would willingly tell you what is going on up there if only I knew how to set it down in a letter. Essentially, it is an elaboration of all the problems that arise out of the mother-incest libido, or rather, the libido-cathected mother-imago. This time I have ventured to tackle the mother. So what is keeping me hidden is the KaTá2 to the realm of the Mothers, where, as we know, Theseus and Peirithoos remained stuck, grown fast to the rocks.3 But in