S.
2 January l9l0 407 Brunswick Avenue Toronto
Dear Professor Freud,
First let me thank you for the interesting reprint that arrived this week.[1] Like all your writings it opens the way to all sorts of new problems, but it leaves one with the regret that it was so short. What a store of knowledge you have to give us.
The Boston expedition was I am glad to say eminently satisfactory. The paper on dreams aroused general interest, and Stanley Hall asked me to publish it in an extended form in the April number of the American Journal of Psychology.[2] In the discussion Putnam unreservedly expressed his agreement with all your views, as he does in two articles in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology[3] the first of which has already appeared. No doubt he has sent you a reprint. Hall spoke but did not say he agreed with your views, confining himself to generalities such as the fact that it was no longer possible for psychologists to ignore your work, that the investigation of it had become urgent, etc. The part of my paper that aroused most opposition was, curiously enough, my statement that the Traumgedanke[n] were always egocentric.[4] One wild female flourished two dreams at me that were "entirely altruistic", and declared there was nothing selfish in her, even in her subconscious. Another one said you had no right to generalise that all dreams were egocentric because you hadn't analysed all dreams; it wasn't scientific. What was true of Austrians might not be true of Americans! I said that experience had shown that a man died if he was immersed in deep water for ten minutes. Was one not justified in generalising this statement before proving it on all men and in all seas? Another psychologist said he had been using your psycho‑analysis in the study of the aesthetics of humour and found that the results of the analysis depended on the temperature of the room. As you have shamefully neglected to publish records of the varying temperature of your Sprachzimmer [consulting room], your conclusions are all worthless. Of all the ingenious criticisms of P. A. I think this is the finest jewel. It beats anything from Germany, don't you agree? Boris Sidis made a fierce general attack on you, made cheap fun of the "mad epidemic of Freudism now invading America", said your psychology took us back to the dark middle ages, and called you "another of these pious sexualists". I made a passionate, but I hope dignified, reply for which Hall and Putnam warmly thanked me. Putnam was so enraged that he couldn't trust himself to speak. Fortunately Sidis is in very bad odour in the medical profession, and is in a fair way to ruining himself. A lady has just left him a country house and estate worth $600,000 to use as a sanatorium. He is foolishly calling it the Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute,[5] and I am sure he will get into financial difficulties over it. Prince did not attack us, but merely said he had failed to find that dreams were always wish fulfillments. He agrees that they are psychical processes, the symbolic representation of subconscious hidden processes and accepts your mechanisms. Dass ist schön [schon] etwas.[6] He is trying to practise P. A. and his whole attitude is quite different from what it used to be. He is full of admiration for your theories, and says that if they are true they constitute a more fundamental discovery than is generally thought. He is reading an address on dreams in New York this month, and got me to write most of it for him.[7] I stayed at his house while in Boston and we had many talks. I may convert him yet, and that would be a great stroke in America. He talked to me pretty frankly about his resistances, the difficulty of giving up old ideas etc., and said he could see we must rely on the [new][8] younger men. I spent one evening at Putnam's and another at Münsterberg's. We held a meeting to organise an American Society of Psycho‑Pathology which will meet in the spring.[9] I met Holt, of Harvard, an exceptionally intelligent man and a very clear thinker.[10] He has only used P. A. in every day life, but accepted the whole of your work as soon as he read it. It fitted in with views of his in pure psychology, on the unconscious etc., and he has a book in the press on consciousness which will expound your views.«FN1.××See Holt (1915).
»
Did I mention to you an American Jew called Rochester, «FN1.××Haydon Rochester (b. 1879), M. D. 1902 University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, N. Y., practising psychiatrist.» from Rochester N. Y.? He came last month to spend a week with me talking over P. A. He had been with Brill in the Vanderbilt last year,«FN1.××The Vanderbilt Clinic in New York.» and since then had been working conscientiously at it in practice. I think he will be pretty good in time.
So you see I am satisfied with the Boston trip, and the whole movement is going forward. Putnam and I discussed the subjects of our papers before the Canadian Medical Assoc. next June. I am to take up general classification and aetiology, «FN1.××Jones (1910k).
» and in regard to that have some questions I should be very glad to have an answer from you on. Do you still hold to the asexuelle Nervosität, without any basis in the sexual constitution? If so how would you clinically differentiate it from slight neurasthenia? Do you ever get pure neurasthenia without some Angstneurose, and how is it «MDUL»clinically«MDNM» related to post‑influenzal depression and exhaustion? I should greatly like a fuller description of the clinical symptoms of pure neurasthenia. Don't you think the gastric disturbances came from Angstneurose?
With warmest wishes for a happy and successful New Year from Yours ever Ernest Jones.
[1] ××Remains unidentified.
[2] Jones (1910d).
[3] ××Putnam (1909‑10).
[4] See Jones (1910d, pp. 141‑142).
[5] ×Sidis's Institute was located at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
[6] That is already something.
[7] See Prince (1910a) for his report to the New York Neurological Society, 4 January 1910.
[8] Crossed out in the original.
[9] See note 1 to letter 32.
[10] Edwin B. Holt (1873‑1946), American psychologist, Ph.D. 1901 Harvard, taught at Harvard and Princeton. Incorporated the notion of purpose or motivation in behavioral psychology.
