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Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
October 1, 1911
Dear Dr. Voigtlander
Many thanks for your communication. I was very interested to hear of the attitude taken by a philosophically trained mind toward my “wild” discoveries; and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that—in spite of being unfamiliar with the empirical foundations
of the theories-you look upon so many things as useful and significant.
Some objections I am not in a position to appreciate fully, for I lack the understanding for the content of certain philosophical terms. On one point, however, I think I have understood you com-pletely, and this is the one I wish to answer.
You suggest that I overestimate the importance of accidental influences on character formation and in contrast you stress the importance of constitutional factors, of disposition, which selects from among the experiences and allows them to become significant. Everything you say on this subject is excellent, except that its polemical application seems to be based on a misunderstanding. For, with a minor modification, we say the same.
We find in psychoanalysis that we are dealing not with one dis-position but with an infinite number of dispositions which are developed and fixed by accidental fate. The disposition is so to speak polymorphous. We also believe that this is again a case in which scientifically thinking people distort a cooperation into an antithesis. The question as to which is of greater significance, con-stitution or experience, which of the two elements decides character, can in my opinion only be answered by saying that
1 [Fate and chance] and not one or the other are decisive. Why should there be an antithesis, since constitution after all is nothing but the sediment of experiences from a long line of ancestors; and why should the individual experience not be granted a share alongside the experience of ancestors?
Now, it seems that in single cases all these possibilities of variation are realized in such a way that in each individual