Letter from Sigmund Freud to Judah Magnes, December 5, 1933

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
December 5, 1933

Dear Sir

I thank you for your letter of the twenty-seventh and hasten to answer the question it contains.

The view that it is premature to create a chair for psychoanalysis so long as none for psychology exists invites a discussion of the relationship between the two sciences. My opinion is as follows: psychoanalysis is also psychology in the sense that it is a science of the unconscious psychic processes, whereas what is taught as academic psychology is confined to dealing with conscious phenomena. There need be no contradiction between the two; psychoanalysis could be presented as an introduction to psychology; in reality, however, the contradiction is produced by the fact that the academic circles don't want to have anything to do with psychoanalysis.

The necessity to start the teaching of psychology with traditional academic psychology doesn't exist. On the contrary, all the applications of psychology to medicine and the arts derive from deep-reaching psychoanalysis, whereas academic psychology has proved itself to be sterile.

I see no reason for assuming that Professor Kurt Lewin1 is the