S.
2O April 191O 4O7 Brunswick Avenue Toronto
Dear Professor Freud,
«IP4,0»I hope by now you have got over the labours of the Congress, and that you feel happy at the success of it.
It was a great pleasure to read your lectures and Jung's in «MDUL»The American Journal of Psychology«MDNM»;«FN1.××Freud (1910a) and Jung (1910).
» a «MDUL»Wiederleben«MDNM» [re‑living] of old experiences. Your lectures were well translated, though you notice they contain many printer's errors. The only criticism I have heard of them so far is that "an ordinary reader would gather that you advocate free love, removal of all restraints, and a relapse to savagery"!! This from our Professor of Psychiatry.«FN1.××C. K. Clarke.
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My indignant letter to Adolf Meyer about the «MDUL»Psychological Bulletin«MDNM» article brought forth satisfactory responses, copies of which I enclose. After getting two letters and a telegram from Meyer and a letter from Warren I again went over the parts left out of the article, and decided to compromise. I insisted on their putting in parts, about incest and about the shifting of the erogenous zone in women, and let them omit a few [matters]«FN1.××Crossed out in the original.» points of detail that didn't at all matter. I think you will agree after you have read the letters that it was the only graceful thing I could do. Warren was evidently in a delicate situation, and honestly doing his best to meet me. To insist on the whole lot would have meant rejection of the article and all future ones; as it is they are both in my debt, always a useful thing with editors. Meyer was pretty decent, but characteristically concerned about himself, an aspect which I must confess hadn't occurred to me. You will naturally keep secret the passage about Warren; I only enclose it because I know you want to be kept «MDUL»au courant«MDNM» with affairs in America. It is a damned shame. He is the leading psychologist in America, and has had to resign his professorship, editorship and even the presidency of the next International Congress of Psychology. The American public are no respectors of persons.«FN1.××Jones is referring to the scandal regarding James Mark Baldwin, former editor of the «MDUL»Psychological Bulletin«MDNM», and Professor at Johns Hopkins, who was arrested by police in a Baltimore brothel in 1908, and later forced to resign his academic and other professional positions, see Leys (1981, pp. 448‑449).
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I will of course send you a reprint of the article as soon as I get them. It was exceedingly difficult to do, and if you have the time I should be very glad to hear from you the chief errors I made, for that is the best way of learning. My dream article in the «MDUL»American Journal of Psychology«MDNM» I am more satisfied with.«FN1.××Jones (1910d).
» It lacks the human vitality and interest of Ferenczi's delightful paper,«FN1.××Ferenczi (1910).
» but it is an attempt to indicate the solidity and technical thoroughness of the «MDUL»Traumdeutung«MDNM». Dream Nr 7 is one of my own, slightly altered; it is a masochistic birth dream.«FN1.××See Jones (1910d, pp. 301‑305), and dream No. 8 in Jones, «MDUL»Papers«MDNM», 5th ed., pp. 237‑240. See also note 9 to letter 6.
» Nrs 4 and 5 are from my wife.«FN1.××Jones (1910d, pp. 293‑296), and also Jones, «MDUL»Papers«MDNM», 5th ed., pp. 227‑231.
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I have heard of three editorial articles on my Hamlet essay, and seen two. One favourable one is in the «MDUL»Umschau«MDNM» for March l2.«FN1.××The «MDUL»Internationale bibliographische Zeitschrift«MDNM», 5(1910):4294, lists two reviews of "Hamlet‑e. sexuelle Problem," in «MDUL»Die Umschau«MDNM»: Nr. 11 (1910) by W. Gallenkamp, and Nr. 15 (1910) by A. A. Friedländer.
» Another favourable one, written anonymously by a friend of mine, came out in The «MDUL»New York Medical Journal«MDNM» (six columns.). An unfavourable one, written in execrable English, appears in the April no. of the «MDUL»Interstate Medical Journal«MDNM».«FN1.××[Anonymous review], "The Mystery of Hamlet's Motives," «MDUL»New York Medical Journal«MDNM», 91(1910):605‑607; and [Anonymous editorial], "Psychology and Hamlet," «MDUL»Interstate Medical Journal«MDNM», 17(1910):221‑223 (for quoted passages, see pp. 222‑223).
» It doesn't mention your name, and classifies me in the Lombroso school«FN1.××Cesare Lombroso (1836‑1909), Italian anthropologist, posited a correlation between criminality and physiognomy, and subscribed to the theory of degeneration to account for criminal behaviour and sexual deviation.
» (Ye Gods!). After speaking of the "wilderness" of my criticism of Hamlet the writer says that I teach that natural affection for the mother "should be carefully watched, lest unawares it steals a march on us", and become sexual. "Now this note of warning, we understand from Dr. Jones' essay, was never brought home to Hamlet by any of his medical friends; hence he nurtured what was in the beginning & a natural affection into that phase of abnormal sexuality whose bitternesses are the one thing that invariably fasten the attention of the modern psychologists. ... who add to the burdens of modern civilisation by weighting us with theories that destroy our faith in numan nature". H. was a pessimist etc., and "why incrust him with other defects that can do naught but prejudice us against the personal beauty of the poetical lines which Shakespeare puts into his mouth? Innocency need not necessarily be the dominant note of modern psychology, but is it absolutely incumbent on all its expositors that they must see sexual abnormality in nearly all the unexplained acts of the unconventional?"
If the writer had read Warren's letter to me he would be relieved of some of his anxiety about the universal preoccupation of all psychologists with "sexual abnormalities".«FN1.××For Warren's attitude, see Leys (1981, pp. 448‑450).
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When is Da Vinci coming out, and what are your next plans? I expect you get shoals of letters from your pupils, especially the younger ones, entreating you to write about this or that subject. May I add to these a little suggestion, which perhaps you may some day have time to consider? I should like you, namely, to write about the development of character traits, and the origin and significance of such sentiments as hate, anger, jealousy, ill‑temperedness, conceit, cowardice etc. etc..
Yours devotedly Ernest Jones.
