Letter from Sigmund Freud to Alexander Lipschütz, August 12, 1931

Vienna, Pötzleinsdorf
August 12, 1931

Dear Professor Lipschütz

My cordial thanks for your good wishes. I am afraid I am so old that wishes are rather wasted on me.

I am here in the country and far from my library, so cannot confirm my suspicion that you are the same person whom I have

quoted several times in my writings and from whose book on the puberty gland I have gained so much knowledge. But I think my assumption is correct. I missed hearing that you had been called to Chile.

What you say about the attitude of scientists toward new scientific discoveries is unfortunately only too true in every respect. One can easily understand the hostility to psychoanalysis which destroys cherished illusions and prejudices, but one may well be surprised by the emotional attitude toward discoveries in your field of endeavor. Probably the reason is that under any circumstances only a few people are constitutionally capable of scientific investigation.

I am very pleased to see from your letter that you are not among those who place psychoanalysis in opposition to endocrinology, as though psychic processes could be explained directly by glandular functions, or as though the understanding of psychic mechanism could replace the knowledge of the underlying chemical process.

Please accept my sincerest good wishes for successful work in your newly-adopted, promising country.

Your
Freud