The Freud/Hall Letters
Document Type
Correspondence
Publication Date
9-26-1913
Keywords
G. Stanley Hall, Sigmund Freud, Clark University, psychoanalysis, 1909 Conference
Description
The twenty-seventh piece of correspondence between G. Stanley Hall and Sigmund Freud. The first known letter in over three years, Hall discusses the various ways that Freud has inspired him as a student and philosopher. Hall also questions Freud's use of sex symbolism. References to various "cards of greeting" suggest the existence of letters that did not survive. "Verdrängung" and "Verschiebung" are mentioned in the letter, which refer to repression and displacement. Wilhelm Stekel, Hodder M. Westropp, Hargrave Jennings, Max Müller, and George W. Cox are mentioned.
The second page of this letter is not currently available to scan. The remainder of the letter is as follows, taken from Hall the King-Maker: The Expedition to America (1909) by Saul Rosenzweig (1992):
"2. I have been trying in a very crude way to apply your mechanisms to the study of children's fears and anger, which seem to me to have plenty of Verdrängung, Verschiebung, and most of the rest.
The thing I stick on is what seems to me the rather wild use of sex symbolism, e.g. that dreams of money means spermatazoa, that every curve is feminine and every straight line masculine. It seems to me there is much danger of repeating the extravagancies of the old students of phallicism, Westorp [sic.], Jennings, etc., or of Max Müller and Cox, who regarded the spear of Ithuriel, the darts of Apollo and everything straight as a ray of sun, and everything curved as its disk.
However, I am only a novice, and only a student of normal psychology, so that I am debarred from the vaster and richer field of abnormal psychology.
May I say in closing, however, that no one in the last twenty years has been a source of so much inspiration as you and your associates.
I am, with great respect,
Very sincerely yours,
G. Stanley Hall"
Recommended Citation
Hall, G. Stanley, "(27) G. Stanley Hall to Sigmund Freud, September 26, 1913" (1913). The Freud/Hall Letters. 5.
https://commons.clarku.edu/freudhall/5
