Letter from Sigmund Freud to Georg Groddeck, February 8, 1920

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
February 8, 1920

Dear Colleague

I will have the novel1 returned to you by our publishing house during the next few days. But you are mistaken, I liked it very much. By parts of it I was highly amused. The passages emulating old English humorists come off very well. In one respect it strikes me that it resembles the immortal prototype of every humorous novel, Don Quixote. The hero grows in the author's hands into something more serious than seemed originally intended. Your talent for plastic description, which is most unusual, I admired especially in the scenes laid in the train.

On the other hand, I agree with you that the book may not be to everyone's taste. Such an abundance of intelligent, candid, and high-spirited thoughts can't be easily digested. And yet you should try to have it published. Certainly worse productions have appeared in the name of psychoanalysis.

We shall always welcome your contributions to Imago. True, we haven't any paper at the moment, but we are trying to get some.

With a colleague's respect
Yours sincerely
Freud