January 1st 1933
PROF. DR. FREUD WIEN IX., BERGGASSE 19

Dear Dr Bose

The first letter of this new year goes out to you.  I did study the essay you were so kind to send me and am deeply impressed by it.  The contradictions with our current psychoanalytic theory are many and deep-going and I reproach myself for not having given attentions [sic] to your ideas before.  That is not only my case, I suspect that your theory of opposite wishes is practically unknown among us and never mentioned or discussed.  This attitude has to be abolished, I am eager to see it weighed and considered by English and German analysts all over.  If you will permit me a suggestion: let us have a paper on the theory written expecially for an analytic public, which may appear in the Zeitschrift and Jones' Journal at the same time, we will do the translation into German here in Vienna.  The essay you sent me is not quite appropriate especially in its first parts as it is meant for the Indian Science Congress.

As regards my own judgment which you ask for, I can only give you first impressions which are of no great value.  It needs more time and effort to overcome the feeling of unfamiliarity when confronted with a theory so different from the one professed hitherto, and it is not easy to get out of the accustomed ways of thinking.  So don't

take it amiss when I say the theory of the opposite wishes strikes me as something less dynamical than morphological, which could not have been evolved from the study of our pathological material.  It appears to me flat, so to say, it seems to lack a third dimension.  I don't think it is able to explain anxiety or the phenomena of repression.  Nor could I make the concession that the biological viewpoints in our psychology are out of place.  But I am not ready yet to stand up for my own objections.  I am still bewildered and undecided.  I see that we did not neglect the fact of the existence of opposite wishes from the three sources of Bisexuality (male and female), ambivalence (love - hate) and the opposition of active - passive.  These phenomena have to be worked into our system to make us see, what modifications or corrections are necessary and how far we can acquiesce to your ideas.  That is what I expect to be the result of the discussion after your paper is presented to the attention of our analyst [sic] and I will be the first to acknowledge our indebtness [sic] to the working of your mind.

With affectionate regards
to you and family,
yours Freud