25 June 1913  Pension Gerö  Lipót‑körút 1O  Budapest V

Dear Professor Freud,

Thank you very much for your kind letter.  As to my wife, she will have so much to do in London this summer that she certainly deserves a quiet time now, especially after the stormy period she has passed through.  Perhaps she will come to Budapest next month.

I feel a special responsibility in passing an opinion about your latest work, for I am probably the only person besides yourself who is familiar with both subjects, the totemism and tabu literature on the one side and Ψα on the other; Robertson Smith's is the only book you quote that I haven't read; to be sure, an important exception.^[1]  I feel calmly and absolutely certain that your theory is perfectly correct, and that it will stand any test the future may submit it to.  What the immediate general impression produced may be is another matter, concerning which I have no opinion, and it may well be that my ready acceptance is greatly helped by personal inclinations in the direction of the theory; I have for years believed that the Oedipus situation originated in actual conflicts between the pretensions of the sons and the jealousy of the sire, these being later converted into inner conflicts, and that we have there the central problem of the development of civilisation (Cf. the last sentence of my Hamlet essay).^[2]  That being so, I can see no possible solution to the problems of totemism other than the one you offer.

I feel that I should express the following idea which forces itself on me, namely that your judgement of the value and correctness of the theory is affected by the fact of your being the author ‑‑ far more than is generally the case in your work, which suggests that this one has an unusual personal significance for you.  The external situation does not explain to me altogether your feeling‑attitude.  For instance, it is not possible that some of your doubt and diminished confidence may have arisen as a reaction to what was perhaps an overestimation of the boldness and dangerous innovation of the theory (as indicated by the initial triumphal feeling in former letters)?  For, to speak quite candidly, I do not find the new theory so terribly startling to one who is familiar with your previous work.  When one takes the conclusions of Frazer, R. Smith, and Atkinson^[3] and fertilises them with the Traumdeutung, what other conclusion is possible that [than] the one you have just ennunciated?  What is chiefly new now is the illuminating way you have linked all the various aspects of the problems together, and made a perfect whole.  (I am referring, of course, to the central theory, not to the numerous other new ideas in the work).  That the son wishes to murder his father and to marry his mother you showed thirteen years ago;^[4] but while Jung devalues this discovery by calling the wish "merely symbolic", you on the contrary go on to point out that it is dread reality.  Probably this progress on your part indicates a still further personal development in an even more absolute conviction of the unqualified truth of the discovery (wahr; aber so wahr!).^[5]  Hence the impression the present work makes on you.  At all events that is my own opinion, and if there is any truth in it I sincerely trust you will not weaken what you have written, but will stand by every word.  You have chosen the part of Mithras,^[6] and must play it out with his courage, as you always have.  How I rejoiced, for instance, to read the passage, so characteristic of you, that if the new factor you add is true, then it is not merely a new factor, but necessarily the central factor!

Now I come to a few details, which are all unimportant, but which perhaps you may care to consider as you were good enough to ask for any remarks that occurred to me.  I have also submitted them to Ferenczi before writing them now.

(1) Fahne 15.  First line of the second footnote.  Is the word "ungeheuerliche Annahme" possibly rather strong?  If you purposely make it so, out of consideration to the reader, then could not the effect be softened by quoting the frequency of actual father‑murder, or the regular priest and king murders in the Golden Bough. (Frazer, Rank)?^[7]

(2). F. 16. end of second paragraph.  The relation of the situation to the institution of mother‑right.  One sees clearly what you mean, but it is so briefly indicated that both Ferenczi and I had to reflect over it for a moment.  Could not an explanatory sentence be added?^[8]

(3). F. 19. first paragraph.  That the human victims represent gods.  Whether it is worth while to quote instances of this,«FN1.××See Freud (1912‑13, p. 151); explicit examples are not provided.

» for it is an important link in the argument?  You must know of many examples.  I remember in Prescott's «MDUL»Conquest of Mexico«MDNM»,«FN1.××William Hickling Prescott, «MDUL»The Conquest of Mexico«MDNM», 2 vols. (London: Everyman's Library, 1913‑14).

» it is described how at the time of Cortes the Mexicans treated their victims with the greatest honour and deference, practically as gods, for a year and a day, then sacrificing them.

(4). F. 2O.  The chief remark.  You describe the hero of the tragedy as the Urvater, who is killed by the Bruderclan of the chorus (originally).«FN1.××Freud (1912‑13, p. 155), «MDUL»G.W.«MDNM» 9:187‑188.

»  I suspect this is entirely so in some tragedies, but that in others he represents the son who kills himself (rushes on his doom in spite of warnings) as a punishment for rebelling against authority (which you mention in the previous paragraph), as a Selbstopfer [self sacrifice] who thus becomes the God‑father (confirmed by the fact of tragedies being revived in the middle ages by the Passion Plays), and that in most he represents a Verdichtung«MDUL»«MDNM» of «MDUL»both«MDNM» father and son. This follows from your other discussion, but perhaps it is worth while to state it so as to avoid misunderstanding, that is of course if you agree to its correctness.«FN1.××Jones argues for interpreting the tragic hero as a condensation (Verdichtung) of «MDUL»both«MDNM» father and son, a suggestion which is not taken up in Freud (1912‑13, p. 156).»

(5). F. 21.  The continuity of the tradition, especially at the time when there was no tyrannical father present,«FN1.××See Freud (1912‑13, p. 158).

» I fancy that the theory could be still further defended against this possible objection, in the following way: It is unlikely that the brothers became later on model fathers, any more than Napoleon became a tolerant ruler after he had freed his country from oppression.  It is true that there was probably no one strong man who drove out the younger generation (although there may have been at times), but still all the adult men must have represented Imagines of a wicked father to the young boy, exactly as at the present day, for the reason that they necessarily disturbed his relation to his mother or to the older women in general, even by their very presence.  The unconscious understanding on his part of the strong Oedipus feelings of his elders (the brothers) must therefore have gone to strengthen a feeling‑attitude that was already there, and which is universal under all circumstances.  After all, you have been obliged in the presentation to imagine a simple schematic case, whereas in fact the whole affair must have been very complicated; repeated murders, fraternal strife, communities living near each other in different stages of the situation, etc.

«IP4,0»That is all, and now I want to say what a delight it was to read the whole essay, both for the wonderful presentation, and for the precious gems one was constantly coming across.

You will have noticed that in this letter I have ventured for the first time to take it for granted that you are a human being with human reactions, and to write openly and frankly as from one man to other.  My analysis is giving me more self‑dependence and freedom by diminishing further what was left of my father‑complex, and I think you will welcome that as much as I do.  It is better to have a natural and therefore permanent attitude of respect and admiration than a kind of veneration which brings with it the dangers of ambivalence.

We get to Vienna at 6.55 on Saturday, and I am greatly looking forward to seeing you again, also my other Vienna friends.

Yours always affectionately  Jones

^[1]           Smith (1894).  See Freud (1912‑13, pp. 132‑140, 143, 147, 151‑152).

^[2]           Jones (1910a, p. 113): "It is only fitting that the greatest work of the world‑poet should have been concerned with the deepest problem and the intensest conflict that has occupied the mind of man since the beginning of time, the revolt of youth and of the impulse to love against the restraints imposed by the jealous eld."

^[3]           Frazer (1910; 1911‑1915), Smith (1894), Atkinson (1903).

^[4]           Freud (1900a).

^[5]           True; but how true!

^[6]           As opposed to Christ who sacrificed his own life to redeem his brothers from original sin, Freud declares: "We may perhaps infer from the sculptures of Mithras slaying a bull that he represented a son who was alone in sacrificing his father and thus redeemed his brothers from their burden of complicity in the deed," see Freud (1912‑13, p. 153).

^[7]           Freud toned this down to "ungeheuerliche erscheinende Annahme".  The result reads: "This hypothesis, which has such a monstrous air ..." rather than the "monstrous hypothesis."  See Freud (1912‑13, p. 142, n. 1), G.W. 9:172 n. 1.

^[8]           See the passage dealing with the "institution of matriarchy," Freud (1912‑13, p. 144).