Sigmund Freud skriver til sin venn Wilhelm Fliess om hvordan han strever med formen i sin bok om drømmenes betydning, og om hvor viktig vennskapet deres er for ham i hans intellektuelle utvikling

Sigmund Freud føler seg mer normal enn på mange år. Han skriver til sin venn Wilhelm Fliess i Berlin, som han gleder seg stort til å treffe i påsken. (Her i engelsk oversettelse, originalen er på tysk):

"Writing he has completely forgotten." Why? And with a plausible theory of forgetfulness in his memory as a warning.

(...) Things are going almost uniformly well for me. I can hardly wait for Easter to show you in detail a principal part of the story of wish fulfillment and of the coupling of opposites.

I am experiencing much pleasure with old cases and have begun two new ones, though not the most favorable. ...

Rome is still distant; you do know my Roman dreams. (...) Occasionally a second part of the treatment is dawning on me: to provoke their feelings in the same way as their associations, as though this were quite indispensable.

The main result of this year's work appears to me the surmounting of fantasies; they have indeed lured me far from what is real. Yet all this work has been very good for my own emotional life; I am apparently much more normal than I was four or five years ago. (...)

I also have a secondary purpose in mind -- the realization of a secret wish that may become ripe at about the same time as Rome. Thus, if ome becomes possible, I shall give up the lectureship. But, as I said, we are not yet in Rome. (Masson, s. 346-347)

Somewhere inside me there is a feeling for form, an appreciation of beauty as a kind of perfection, and the tortuous sentences of my dream book, with their parading of indirect phrases and squinting at ideas, deeply offended one of my ideals.

Nor am I far wrong in regarding this lack of form as an indication of insufficient mastery of the material. ...

Unfortunately, I cannot do without you as the representative of the Other -- and again have sixty more pages for you. (...)

My central accomplishment in interpretation comes in the [enclosed] installment, the absurd dreams. It is astonishing how often you appear in them. In the non vixit dream I am delighted to have outlived you; isn't it terrible to suggest something like this -- that is, to have to make it explicit to everyone who understands?"