Letter from Sigmund Freud to C. G. Jung, May 23, 1912

23 May 1912, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear friend,

Many thanks for your quick answer and explanations. Rosenstein will send you his article directly, he is willing to accept any cuts and changes you may suggest.

In the libido question, I finally see at what point your conception differs from mine. (I am referring of course to incest, but I am thinking of your heralded modifications in the concept of the libido.) What I still fail to understand is why you have abandoned the older view and what other origin and motivation the prohibition of incest can have.1 Naturally I don't expect you to explain this difficult matter more fully in letters; I shall be patient until you publish your ideas on the subject.

I value your letter for the warning it contains, and the reminder of my first big error, when I mistook fantasies for realities.1a I shall be careful and keep my eyes open every step of the way.

But if we now set reason aside and attune the machine to pleasure, I own to a strong antipathy towards your innovation. It has two sources. First the regressive character of the innovation. I believe we have held up to now that anxiety originated in the prohibition of incest; now you say on the contrary that the prohibition of incest originated in anxiety, which is very similar to what was said before the days of ΨA.

Secondly, because of a disastrous similarity to a theorem of Adler's, though of course I do not condemn all Adler's inventions. He said:2 the incest libido is “arranged”; i.e., the neurotic has no desire at all for his mother, but wants to provide himself with a motive for scaring himself away from his libido; he therefore pretends to himself that his libido is so enormous that it does not even spare his mother. Now this still strikes me as fanciful, based on utter incomprehension of the unconscious. In the light of your hints, I have no doubt that your derivation of the incestuous libido will be different. But there is a certain resemblance.