1 January 1911  4O7 Brunswick Avenue  Toronto

Dear Professor Freud,

Thank you very much for your letter that came yesterday.  I am eagerly looking forward to your Schreber paper.  Is it to appear in the Schriften or the Jahrbuch?  I have just read Brill's translation of the Drei Abhandlungen, with Putnam's excellent preface.^[1]  The translation is decidedly better than the former one, though it leaves much to be desired.  It will, I think, do more good than the previous volume, being a better Zusammenhang.^[2] Certainly we owe Brill a debt of gratitude for such laborious and difficult work.

The Ortsverein here is progressing excellently so far as membership is concerned.  No one so far has refused to join, and we are looking forward to the May meeting with much anticipation.  Putnam is busy reading several papers at local meetings.  I am afraid that all other news I have to give is only personal.  I hope the enclosed note, which you asked for, will be suitable.

Now I come to a big confession!  Namely it will be impossible to send you the Nightmare Schrift^[3] as soon as I promised.  I have worked terrificly hard at it, but had again underestimated the time necessary to overcome the difficulties of arranging so much material into a readable and logical connection.  Even so it looks as though I will not be able to do it in less than l50 pages.  I have definitely failed to compress it into the size of the previous Schriften, and must send it to you to decide how best it can be published.  So far I have finished writing out the first draft of six of the twelve chapters, and have most of the rest mapped out.  The work however is much interrupted.  Last month I couldn't touch it for three weeks at a stretch, and now again I must lay it aside for another three weeks on account of my Chicago paper.^[4]  I do not see how it can be finished before the end of March.  My only consolation is that it will certainly contain some fascinating and strongly confirmatory matter.

You are right in telling me not to take up too much work, but it is exceedingly difficult to know what to choose. I am bubbling with all sorts of plans for work; and I do not think they are too infantile, for it is mostly work that I feel I can do.  At present I do not see how I can begin the psychiatry book till the autumn,^[5] there is so much to do first.  I have promised Jung to send him some cases for the Jahrbuch.  February I must give up to my contribution to the symposium on Angst at the Psychopathological Association,^[6] etc.  One thing I especially reproach myself for is that I am losing some of my zest for elementary propagandism, having greatly replaced it by the desire to work in the attractive and unexplored fields of folklore, anthropology and mythology.  They have the strongest fascination for me, and there is so much that needs to be done.

This week I got a strange invitation from the Philadelphia Neurological Society.  They want to hold in February a Symposium on your work.  The psychopathological sides are to be presented by Prince (!) and myself, and it is to be attacked on the neurological side (!) by the local mandarins, Mills, Dercum, etc.  The prospect is not enchanting, and I am trying to prove to myself that I would do more harm than good by going.  I sent a cold answer, asking for some days to think it over, and wrote to Brill and Putnam to get their opinions.  I feel you would not blame me for refusing, for it is a really stupid proposal.^[7]

My "Janet" paper has appeared, dreadfully mutilated by the printers.«FN1.××Jones (1910‑11a).

»  They translated (badly) many of the foreign quotations without my consent, so please excuse that; I was very angry.  The reprints have not yet come, but I expect to send you one next week.

It is my birthday today (32), and I am full of resolutions for the coming year.  My strongest wish is that it will be for you personally and for our work a successful and happy year.

With warmest greetings  Yours always  Ernest Jones.

«IP0,0»«MDUL»Footnote«MDNM».«FN1.××This footnote was sent in response to the request contained in Freud's previous letter regarding the German version of the Hamlet essay (Jones, 1910a), see «MDUL»Schriften«MDNM», 10:61 and Jones (1949, pp. 145‑146).

»

In a recent paper (Simulated Foolishness in Hysteria, «MDUL»American Journal of Insanity«MDNM», Oct. 19O9. P#279)«FN1.××The piece was actually published in 1910, see Jones (1910i).

»  I have connected the hysterical moria states that show this symptom with the infantile ecmnesia described by Pitres.  In an actual psychoanalysis there recorded I was able fully to confirm Professor Freud's suggestion referred to above, and to show that the motive of the behaviour was, by feigning infantile innocence, to gratify sexual sensations with the mother in ways that are denied to older children.

^[1]           Brill (1910b).

^[2]           Jones likely means "better integrated."

^[3]           Jones (1912j).

^[4]           Jones (1911d).

^[5]           This was never completed.

^[6]           Jones (1911e).

^[7]           "Symposium on Freud's Theory of the Neuroses and Allied Subjects," Philadelphia Neurological Association, 24 February 1911, see Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 38(1911):491‑497.  For Jones's letter to Putnam with his reply, see Hale (1971a, pp.248‑250).