S.

25 January 192O  The Plat  Elsted

Dear Professor,

I got your reply in 36 hours after sending off my telegram[1] ‑‑ quite pre‑war communication.  The patient, Captain Daly,[2] ca. 3O, in the regular Indian Army, is making all arrangements to go next week, provided he gets permission from the India office, and will write to you.  I analysed him for a few months four years ago.  It is chiefly a question of foolish character‑traits, conceit and inferiority, slightly hysterical, rather an ass but easy to manage.  I told him you would charge him two guineas.  He has a year's leave from the Army, and will find it cheaper to live in Vienna than in London.

A clever man, a doctor, friend of Rivers of Cambridge,[3] has decided to give several years studying psychopathology in different countries,[4] is extremely interested in Ψα of which he already knows something, and begs me to ask you if you can take him for analysis in the first week of April.  I think he would also pay two guineas.  He seems a very solid, promising fellow, to judge from a single short interview.

 

Last week I read a long paper before the British Psychological Society on "Recent Advances in Ψα" ‑‑ a Referat,[5] almost entirely of your works.  Can you think of your five essays on meta psychology being condensed to a dozen pages?  It was, as you will imagine, an extraordinarily difficult task, but I am not ashamed of the way I accomplished it.  The title was so attractive that it drew the most brilliant and representative audience I have ever seen in England, practically all the well‑known psychologists and psychopathologists from all over the country, Oxford, Cambridge, even Scotland; ten professors.  It proved to be very successful indeed, and I can say it produced exactly the effect I intended,  namely of heightening their respect for the seriousness, solidity and complexity of our science.  It was also for various reasons a specially great personal success, and made me think of your saying: a man is strong so long as he represents a strong idea.

About the Tannenbaum nonsense I have written my views to Rank, who will doubtless communicate them to you.  From Brill not a word, and we are waiting anxiously for his article.  Forsyth and Bryan have nearly finished theirs,[6] Brill did not send one; and Forsyth withdrew his, see letters 271, 276.+ and I hope to forward them next week.

I should like to have some personal news of you, for I am very concerned [about] this weather.  How much heating have you?

Yours always affectionately  Ernest Jones.

 

[1]    Both communications are missing.

[2]    C. D. Daly (1884‑1950), Peshawur, India, in analysis with Freud for about a year beginning in February 1920.  Transcripts of his own dreams, which he painstakingly recorded, are contained in the Archives of The British Psycho‑Analytical Society.

[3]    W. H. R. Rivers (1864‑1922), medical psychologist and anthropologist, St. John's College, Cambridge; Associate Member, British Psycho‑Analytical Society.

[4]    John Rickman (1891‑1951), whose name is noted in the margin, later became an important member of the British Psycho‑Analytical Society, taking part in numerous editorial and administrative activities; analyzed by Freud in 1920 and 1921, and by Ferenczi between 1929 and 1931.

[5]    Jones (1920a).

[6]    Only the latter's article appeared, see Douglas Bryan, "Freud's Psychology," Journal, 1(1920):56‑67.