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Vienna, November 5, 1897
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
I have nothing to write really; this happens only during an hour when one could use dialogue and encouragement.
When I last wrote, I did not know anything about the details of Mela's confinement. Since then he [Oscar] has told me about them. I felt very sorry for him; he was terribly shaken and once again has assumed the air of false authority by means of which he silences what is neurotic in him. In the meantime he has become calmer, but the necessity of a laparotomy or of renouncing further offspring will no doubt cast a pall over his mood for some time. The young mother is said to be very cheerful and well now; naturally I have not yet seen her. I spoke briefly with Miss Marie, who is quite smitten with my new nephew — who, as I noticed, increasingly conquers even your cool paternal heart. It is interesting that the literature is now turning so much to the psychology of children. Today I received another book on the subject, by James Mark Baldwin.1 So one always remains a child of his age, even in what one deems one's very own.
Incidentally, I shudder when I think of all the psychology I shall have to read up on the next few years. At the moment I can neither read nor think. I am completely exhausted by observation. My self-analysis once more is at a standstill; or, rather, it slowly trickles on without my understanding anything of the course it takes. In the other analyses my latest idea about resistance has continued to help me. Recently I had occasion to take up again an old and already published idea about the choice of neurosis, namely, that hysteria is connected with sexual passivity; obsessional neurosis, with activity. Otherwise, it goes slowly, very slowly. Since I can not do anything except analyze and am not fully occupied, I am bored in the evening. My lectures2 are attended by eleven students who sit there with pencil and paper and hear damnably little that is positive. I play the part of a neuropat