Letter from Sigmund Freud to Karl Abraham, January 2, 1912

119F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
2 January 1912

Dear Friend,

Having filled the holidays with the writing of two and a half treatises1 (which I do not like) and all sorts of private discontents, I at last come round to sending my best wishes for the prosperity of your wife and children and yourself that you so well deserve and the fulfilment of which would give me so much pleasure. Shared interests and personal liking have tied us so intimately together that we have no need to doubt the genuineness of our good wishes for each other.

I know how difficult a position you have in Berlin and always admire you for your unruffled spirits and tenacious confidence. The chronicle of our undertaking is perhaps not always pleasant, but that may be true of most chronicles; it will yet make a fine chapter of history. The latest favourable signs, strangely enough, have come from France. We have gained a vigorous helpmate in Morichau-Beauchant in Poitiers (see his article in the Gazette des Hôpitaux, 1911, p. 1,845),2 and today I received a letter from a student of Régis in Bordeaux, written on his behalf, apologizing in the name of French psychiatry for its present neglect of Ψα. He announced his willingness to come out with a long paper about it in Encéphale.3

For myself I have no great expectations; gloomy times lie ahead, and recognition will probably come only for the next generation. But we have the incomparable pleasure of the first discoveries. My work on the ψ of religion is going ahead very slowly, so I should prefer to remove it from the agenda altogether. I have to write something in the nature of a preliminary communication for the new journal “”, something from the ψ of savage peoples.4 Reik's work5 is too long for the Sammlung, and I heard only just today from the author (who is a member of ours) that it is to appear as a book.

Farewell, and do not write too seldom

to your faithful

Freud