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Kreuzlingen, 7 October 1926
153B
Dear Professor Freud,
The new psychoanalytic Almanac1 arrived a few days ago. I do not know to whom I owe the honour of being represented in it,2 but I am certainly very glad to appear once again publicly in such company,
particularly of course in yours. The inclusion of my little essay in this collection pleases me all the more as psychoanalysis has, until now, been opposed for the most part to theoretical discussions and standards not inherent in it but brought in ‘from outside’. But as you know, I myself feel the need to examine psychoanalytic theories in the light of general methodological criteria and to determine their place in man's intellectual development, which is precisely what I have tried tentatively to do in this essay. I hope that I shall be able to discuss the subject at greater length in the second edition of my General Psychology,3 which, I am pleased to say, is already in hand. You will not take it amiss that in it I reach conclusions which in many questions of principle differ from those of the psychoanalytic ‘school’, since you have once again shown in your book on anxiety4 how remorselessly you ‘expose’ your own intellectual children once they have ceased to be compatible with your more advanced views. My own differences are not in respect of therapy as such, but concern the application of certain results obtained in practical psychoanalysis to mental life in general. It was thus that I made a critical comment at the Groningen Congress during the discussion of Jones's lecture on the psychology of religion,5 but I could see that he did not understand what I meant. How often I find myself conversing with you in my mind about these questions, noting your disagreement but occasionally also - I will not say your approval, but your attentive ear! I will make no attempt as yet to trouble and tire you with all these things in person. To my delight, however, the next Congress of the German Association for Neurology is to