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Kreuzlingen, 27 August 1923
137B
Dear Professor Freud
I only recently came into possession of the fifth volume of your Sammlung kleiner Schriften1 [Collected Short Papers], and having just finished reading the History of an Infantile Neurosis2 I feel impelled to send you a few lines about it at once, since it has made so very great an impression upon me. I admire your perspicacity all over again and the incredible intellectual work underlying the actual analysis (which is not even reported in full) and your account of it. Above all, however, I would like to put on record that you are the first person to place the discussion3 (with Jung and Adler) on a truly scientific basis and to test the various theoretical views against the individual empirical fact. The ideas of the others have always struck me as being more in the nature of sudden fancies or intellectual hobbyhorses than the results of true scientific investigations. I found the case itself of the utmost interest and I must say that I could raise almost no objection, even in respect of the time factor. What you have to say about the primal scene in general as well as in this particular case, and about the differences in approach, has helped me a great deal. The whole problem of the primal scene, i.e., the convergence of all