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Vienna, January 30, 1899
Dear Wilhelm,
From what I hear, you have been in Warsaw. I hope it did you good and cost someone else a lot of money. My delay in writing is explained as follows: I had completed a letter to you a week ago because I believed I had made a real discovery. But doubts set in as I was writing; I decided to wait and was right because the thing was not correct; that is to say, there was something to it, but it had to be reinterpreted with application to quite another area.
You probably do not know how much your last visit raised my spirits. I am still living on it. The light has not gone out since then; bits of insight are dawning now here, now there — a genuine rein-vigoration by comparison with the desolation of last year. What is rising out of the chaos this time is the connection to the psychology contained in the Studies on Hysteria — the relation to conflict, to life: clinical psychology, as I should like to call it. Puberty is becoming ever more central; fantasy as the key holds fast.1 Yet there is still nothing big or complete. I diligently make notes of all that is worthwhile so as to present it to you at our congress. I need you as my audience.
For relaxation I am reading Burckhardt's History of Greek Civilization, which is providing me with unexpected parallels. My predilection for the prehistoric in all its human forms has remained the same.
On day 28 Mathilde had another throat infection, after which she lost a tooth; then she grew again and — is miserable. Her mother, incidentally, did exactly the same thing before the onset of her menstrual periods.
February 3. I could not resolve to send off this letter as if it were completed, and was waiting for new material. But nothing came. Everything is now going in the pages on which I make notes for our congress, and neither my interest nor my energy is sufficient for