Letter from Freud to Fliess, July 1, 1900

Vienna, July 1, 1900
IX., Berggasse 19

Dear Wilhelm,

So day is really breaking! But I am not as indifferent to it as you are. Your case always seemed to me far more depressing. In my case I can readily explain people's resistance in terms of the discomfort evoked by the subject. But your subject matter is clean and impersonal, and the only possible explanation is people's aversion to anything new that could be true, and this explanation is really too dismal. Let us take an additional factor into consideration. When the publications which will label your findings as classic appear and the scientific community demonstrates its well-known sheeplike nature in that it will generally accept what it had previously rejected, won't you then have a certain feeling of satisfaction when you imagine Hofrat Chrobak and his clinical assistants endeavoring to see only what they originally saw and then denying it to themselves and to others? Such spiteful glee, such satisfied thirst for revenge plays an important role in my case; so far I have savored too little of this delicious fare. So I am joining you in nibbling a spoonful of your meal. There is an additional factor that explains why, faced with the same judgment, we can behave so differently. Both of us probably set equally little store on the approval of our worthy contemporaries, but you are not dependent on it because you also pull teeth, cut noses, and do other things that they remunerate without getting into conflict with you. But I am supposed to make my living precisely from the opinion of the very same people whose opinion I despise. I probably would be as unconcerned as you are if I were equally independent.

I shall certainly see you during this vacation and at the place you designate. What is still questionable for me is whether it is possible at the beginning of August. I shall probably go with my wife to Trafoi for a week in August and must then avoid the period during which she is not capable of enjoyment. I did not g