Letter from Karl Abraham to Sigmund Freud, March 31, 1915

273A

Deutsch Eylau
31 March 1915

Dear Professor,

I have long postponed commenting on your outline of a theory of melancholia—and not only because I have no real peace for work. Some years ago I myself made an attempt in this direction1 but was always aware of its imperfections, and was therefore afraid that my attitude to your new theory might well be too subjective. I think that I have now got over this difficulty and am able to accept all the essentials in your work. I do think, however, that one element from my earlier work should be more heavily stressed than it is in yours and should like to put forward a suggestion that may solve the question left open by you. Important questions do naturally remain unresolved, and I have no explanation for them at the present time.2

I should like to remind you—not in order to stress any priority but merely to underline the points of agreement—that I also started from a comparison between melancholic depression and mourning. I found support in your paper on obsessional neurosis (the Rat Man),3 which had just been published, and stressed that sadism was important because its intensity does not allow the capacity for love to arise; and I deduced depression from a perception of one's inability to love. I had to leave completely unanswered the question of why melancholia develops in one case and obsession in another. At the time, two important papers of yours were still to be written: “Narcissism”4 and “Pregenital Organizations”.5 I recently wrote to you to say how completely convinced I was, particularly by this new concept of obsessional neurosis. If therefore, as you will surely acknowledge, there is a relationship between obsessional neurosis and melancholia, the new insight into obsessional neurosis will also shed light on melancholia.

Of the two important factors in the genesis of obsessional neurosis—sadism and anal erotism—I strongly stressed the importance in melancholia