8 April l9O9  4O7 Brunswick Avenue  Toronto

Dear Professor Freud,

«IP4,0»This is just a line to say how very much I enjoyed your article on Der kleine Hans.«FN1.××Freud (1909b).»  It was a wonderfully finished study and also a valuable confirmation of the conclusions you had reached by other routes.  The infantile theory of the resemblance between childbirth and defaecation must be very common, judging from the frequency with which it is revealed in male patients in asylum work.  I am seeing manifestations of it very often indeed.

I was greatly interested in your suggestion about contempt for women and for Jews for "penis" reasons.«FN1.××Freud (1909b, p. 36).

»  The former struck me straight away as profound, but the latter seemed stranger to me, as I would have said the general attitude towards Jews is hate (owing to their success, aloofness etc.) rather than contempt.  However some lines of Browning's poetry occurred to me which I must confess support your view, and, in case you are not familiar with them, I will quote them.  They form an epilogue to the poem Cleon, in which the Greek philosopher is answering a letter of a foreign king who has appealed to him.  He expounds a very pessimistic Weltanschauung and concludes thus:

«IP11,0»"And for the rest,

I cannot tell thy messenger aright

Where to deliver what he bears of thine

To one called Paulus; we have heard his fame

Indeed, if Christus be not one with him ‑‑

I know not, nor am troubled much to know.

Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew,

As Paulus proves to be, «MDUL»one circumcized«MDNM»,«FN1.××Emphasis added by Jones.  From 'Cleon', in Browning (1895, p. 361).

»

Hath access to a secret shut from us?

Though wrongest our philisophy, O King,

In stooping to inquire of such an one,

As if his answer could impose at all!

He writeth, doth he?  well, and he may write.

Oh, the Jew findeth scholars!  certain slaves

Who touched on this same isle, preached

       him and Christ;

And (as I gathered from a bystander)

Their doctrine could be held by no sane man".

«IP4,0»Obviously all the scorn of the passage is concentrated on the two words I have underlined.  Browning was an orthodox Christian, and although none of his writings are anti‑semitic still he may have been annoyed to think that his Saviour was a Jew.  Much of his writings shews strong masochistic tendencies.  I wonder what the explanation might be?

I am sailing to Europe July l7 and leave there end of August (date not fixed).

With kind regards  Yours most sincerely  Ernest Jones.