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B[erchtesgaden]
Riemerlehen, August 6, 1899
Dear Wilhelm,
When are you not right? Once again you put into words what I had dimly been thinking to myself, that this first chapter is apt to deter a lot of readers from going on to the following chapters. But there is little to be done about it — except for putting a note in the preface, which we shall construct when everything else is done. You did not want the literature in the body of the work and you were right; nor at the beginning and you are right again. You feel about it as I do; the secret probably is that we do not like it at all. But if we do not want to hand the “scientists” an ax with which to slaughter the poor book, we must put up with it somewhere. The whole thing is planned on the model of an imaginary walk. At the beginning, the dark forest of authors (who do not see the trees), hopelessly lost on wrong tracks. Then a concealed pass through which I lead the reader — my specimen dream with its peculiarities, details, indiscretions, bad jokes — and then suddenly the high ground and the view and the question: which way do you wish to go now?
There is of course no need to return the proofs I am sending to you. Since you did not take exception to anything in Chapter 1, I shall finish it in the galleys. Nothing else has yet been set in type. You shall receive the proofs as soon as they arrive and the new parts will be marked in them. — I have inserted a large number of new dreams, which I hope you will not delete. Pour faire une omelette il faut casser des oeufs.1 Incidentally, only humana and humaniora;2 nothing really intimate, that is, personally sexual. Breuer, too, has been kept at a distance as much as possible. In the last few days I have been very pleased with the work. “I like it,” says Uncle Jonas,3 which, according to experience, is a bad omen for its success. With your permission I shall put Robert's dream among the hunger dreams of children, after Annerl's menu dream. We shall replace “mutual”4 with