You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
January 1, 1913
Dear Colleague
I take pleasure in embarking on the activities of the New Year with a letter to you. My warmest thanks for declaring your intention to contribute to our periodical. I am equally grateful because your words give me reason to believe that you have not lost faith in me despite the many personal attacks to which I am exposed at the moment and which will probably continue for some time. You will also believe me when I say that I am not very upset by these attacks because I understand too well the psychological necessity for such occurrences. I am thinking not so much of Stekel, the loss of whom was actually a gain, but chiefly of Jung, whom I greatly overestimated and for whom I felt considerable personal affection.
Scientific differences are after all inevitable in the development of a new science and even errors, as I have experienced in myself, have many aspects that are beneficial. But that such deviations and reforms of a theoretical character have to go hand in hand with so much wounding of justified personal feelings does little credit to human nature.
That I look upon Jung's new views as “regressive” errors goes without saying, but this won't necessarily be convincing to others. In cases of this kind everyone should consult his own experiences and the impression made on him by the arguments. On me all this has the effect of a déjà-vu. i have already experienced in the resistance of the nonanalyst what is now repeating itself in the resistance of the half-analyst.
We are looking forward to your forthcoming papers with great