2O October 1928  81 Harley Street  London W1

Dear Professor,

«IP4,0»First I am glad to hear today from Eitingon that there are good prospects of your getting substantial relief as the result of your visit to Berlin.  If good wishes had the power they deserve there would be no doubt of the gratifying result.  I shall look forward to hearing good news soon.

I have been asked to write a Biography of you for the «MDUL»Encyclopaedia Britannica«MDNM».«FN1.××Jones (1929f).  He also wrote a piece on abnormal psychology for the same edition, see Jones (1929e).»  If there is time I will send you a copy to correct, but feel I should be competent for even this responsible task.  I wonder if you can remember «MDUL»when«MDNM» it was that Breuer first told you of Anna O?  I assume it must be about 1884.  After much correspondence I obtained a confidential copy of the article on | / for the new edition of the «MDUL»Encyclopaedia Britannica«MDNM» and want to be sure it is authorised by you.  It is signed by your name, but it has been written by a Prof. Wolf who compiled it from your previous article (These Eventful Years).«FN1.××"Psychoanalysis: Freudian School," «MDUL»Encyclopaedia Britannica«MDNM», 14th ed. 18:672‑674.»  It has no serious mistakes, but the perspective is not good, and it is in several respects not as you would have written it.  Will you reassure me that they have your permission to do this.

I am sending you a packet of reviews of «MDUL»The Future of an Illusion«MDNM».«FN1.××See Kiell (1988, pp. 712‑713) for an extensive list of reviews of Freud (1927c).

»  There are one or two good ones, but mostly they can be described as stupid though respectful.  They will at all events show you that I was right in saying that no one in England would be shocked on religious grounds.

My paper on | / and Folklore aroused intelligent interest at the Folklore Congress in London last month.«FN1.××Jones (1928b).

»  The resistance there mainly takes the form of scepticism about any unitary psychological explanations, after their disastrous experiences with Max Müller,«FN1.××Friedrich Max Müller (1823‑1900), German born, British philologist, professor at Oxford of modern European languages, comparative philology, and curator of Bodleian library, gave up professorial duties in 1875 to edit «MDUL»Sacred Books of the East«MDNM» (51 vols.) and to devote himself to comparative mythology and comparative study of religions; extremely influential in Oriental linguistic and mythological scholarship.

» solar myths, etc.  It seems to be my destiny to be the first to present | / to professional audiences.  I think this is true in folklore, anthropology, psychology, pedagogy, and perhaps general medicine (though not of neurology or psychiatry).«FN1.××For example, see Jones (1928b, 1924e, 1924f, 1910f, 1934).

»

Coming to more personal matters I think I can tell you that work and time have had a slightly analgesic effect on our minds, perhaps more on mine than on my poor wife's.  She is now struggling to take an interest in the study of Norwegian, which certainly seems far enough away; she also took some interest in arranging a new study‑sitting‑room for herself.  But life is very bleak and we manage to get on by sheer repression of the intolerable, not by any sort of philosophic assimilation of it.  I ask myself if my extensive experience of grief does not enable me to make any contribution to our understanding of it.  I have lost by death my father and mother, three out of my four closest friends, a wife and an only daughter.  Of course the last two were in a quite different category from all the others.  There cannot be much I do not know about grief on the conscious side, the variety, quality and conditions of its pain, and so on; but the connections with the unconscious are a more obscure matter.  Of this too I know more than I can write in a letter, but I will mention one point.  You have often raised the question of the extraordinary intensity of the pain in the Trauerarbeit, which you describe as a withdrawal of the Libido.  But this withdrawal is not necessarily in itself painful, cf. for instance simply ceasing to be in love with someone.  Here the fact that it is sharply against one's will is evidently important and must re‑activate castration fears.  It seems to me that the Unc. cannot conceive of another person's death except in terms of murder, so that when it is demanded of one to "accept" the terrible «MDUL»fait accompli«MDNM», this to the Unc. means being asked to consent to the murder of the loved one.  We know in this connection the guilt that often follows death, the searchings of heart, self‑reproach and other more indirect consequences of guilt.  Perhaps I have been better able to see this now just because my attitude towards my daughter was a purer non‑ambivalent love than in any of my other experiences.  The two features I have mentioned, castration (thwarting) and murder‑guilt are obviously connected in more ways than one.

This leads on to ideas about grief and neurosis, and grief and religion.  I find, for instance, that intense grief leads to either more devotion to religion than before or to more repudiation of it (usually the latter).

This letter is long enough.  Once again I express the regret that the journey between London and Vienna is so long; I have lost much in life from this simple fact.

With all my good wishes and profound respect  Yours always devotedly  Ernest Jones