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January 3, 1897
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
We shall not be shipwrecked. Instead of the channel we are seeking, we may find oceans, the more detailed exploration of which will be left to those who come after us; but if we do not prematurely capsize, if our constitutions can stand it,1 we shall arrive. Nous y arriverons. Give me another ten years, and I shall finish the neuroses and the new psychology. You probably will need less time for your organology. In spite of the complaints you allude to, no New Year has ever found both of us as rich and as ripe. When I happen to be without anxiety, I am still ready to take on all the devils; and you have never known anxiety.
You surely do not believe that my neurotic theories have as flimsy a basis as the comments I am sending you on organology. Here I lack all material and can only guess; in my own field, I rely on the most solid foundation you could imagine. I certainly still have much to learn; thus, the limits of the time periods during which the individual neuroses arise will probably need to be corrected once the cases are terminated. While the work is in progress, it is precisely the neuroses that resist the determination of time more than any other factor. At present everything, it seems to me, is converging more and more on the first period of life, up to three years. This year I have had no further news from a patient with obsessional ideas whom I treated only for seven months. Yesterday I learned from Mrs. F. (who heard it from Professor Sulz [Petz?]) that this man traveled to his hometown in order to ascertain the reality of the things he remembered and that he received full confirmation from his seducer, who is still alive (his nurse, now an old woman).2 He is said to be doing very well; he is obviously avoiding a complete cure, aided by this improvement. The agreement [of my material] with the perversions described by Krafft [-Ebing] is a new, valuable reality confirmation.
At our next congress I hope there will