'No greater, richer, more mysterious subject [...] than the life of the mind'. An early exchange of letters between Freud and Einstein.

The exchange of letters between Freud and Einstein to which we owe 'Why war?' was preceded three years earlier, in 1929, by another, hitherto unknown, brief correspondence. It began with a rather peculiar congratulatory missive sent by Freud to Einstein on the occasion of the latter's fiftieth birthday, against which the recipient defended himself with jovial sarcasm. Freud explained his 'transgression' in a long and illuminating letter, in which he characterised it as an expression of envy. In so doing he assigned an exceedingly benign quality to the affect of envy and suppressed the obvious admixture of aggression. The author shows in her interpretation that Freud's envy was directed chiefly towards the undisputed world renown of the much younger man, whose work had already been distinguished with the Nobel Prize. Freud may possibly have known that, not long before, Einstein had declined to second the nomination of the founder of psychoanalysis for a Nobel Prize; at any rate, his letter describes in telling images the particular difficulties and handicaps associated with the investigation of human mental life.