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20 June 1921
123B
Dear Professor Freud,
I have not been in touch since Holland1 because I did not want to ‘catch your eye’ until my book was more or less ready. This is now
the case.2 At the same time I have a request. You told me in The Hague3 it was my fault that Switzerland had fallen so far behind in the psychoanalytic movement. That reproach I had to swallow. However, I need not feel too despondent, because my conduct has been due not to laziness or to a wasted opportunity, but to my complete (inner and outer) unsuitability for the task. Still, what I was unable to do about the ‘outer’ development of the psychoanalytic movement, I think I am able to contribute towards its inner development. Above all I would like in a small way to put it on record that your scientific life's work, along with that of Bleuler, has given the most powerful impetus to my own scientific work and thought, and that I cherish the greatest admiration for it. I am therefore asking you for permission to dedicate my book to you and to Bleuler, in the following words: ‘To my teachers Eugen Bleuler and Siegmund [sic] Freud.’ I would add that this book, entitled Einführung in die Probleme der allgemeinen Psychologie, does not as yet concern itself with psychoanalysis and mentions your name but rarely. Its sole purpose is to examine the foundations of psychology up to that point, and in such a way that in the next volume an account of psychoanalysis can follow naturally. It would give me pleasure to include your two names in my book, which I would refer to in some form in the preface4 in order to demonstrate that the scientific impetus exerted by teacher on pupil is in no way confined to the teacher's particular field of research, but, far beyond that, provides an impetus to scientific work in general. I can safely say that without the interest in psychiatry which I acquired through you and Bleuler, I should not have written this book, since my heart belongs to psychiatry, to which I shall alway