Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ludwig Binswanger, April 11, 1929

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
April 11, 1929

Dear Dr. Binswanger

I don't know whether it was in 1912 or 1913 that I paid you a visit and was so impressed1 by your courage that it has gained for you ever since a high place in my estimation. The intervening years, as you know, have made a rather frail old man of me. I can no longer travel to shake your hand.

April 12, 1929

My daughter2 who died would have been thirty-six years old today.

Yesterday I nearly committed a serious blunder. I began reading your letter, deciphered some isolated friendly words which I would have been sorry to miss, but I was unable to fit them into a sentence, and the further I got the more enigmatic your handwriting became. I considered returning the letter to you with a jocular expression of my indignation and the suggestion that you send it back to me rewritten. Then my sister-in-law offered her assistance and gave me the deeply moving news contained in the latter part of the letter, whereupon I understood why you had not dictated it into the machine.

Although we know that after such a loss the acute state of mourning will subside, we also know we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else. And actually this is how it should be. It is the only way of perpetuating that love which we do not want to relinquish.

Please give my warm regards to your wife.

In old friendship
Your old
Freud