Details
EINSTEIN, Albert. Autograph letter signed ('Papa') to his son Eduard ('Lieber Tetl'), n.p., n.d., 1½ pages, 4to, on a leaf from a notebook.
Einstein on Freud and psychoanalysis, and progress with Mayer on the Unified Field Theory. Einstein announces that he and Mayer together have completed a wonderful bit of work on altogether different lines to those on which he had been working for three years; 'The inner relation between Gravitation and Electricity is now clear. To be sure, the theory does not include a solution of the material problem, but the method is suitable for extension'. In response to Eduard's interests in the area, he has been reading Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, but they have not converted him 'from a Saul to a Paul', and he delivers himself of a scathing criticism of Freud's approach: 'Das meiste scheint mir bei den Haaren herbeigezogen und überaus künstlich, die Methode äusserst unsicher, ja trügerisch' (most of it seems to me very far-fetched and exceedingly artificial, the method exceptionally uncertain, indeed fraudulent).
Einstein had met Freud for the first time in 1926, on which occasion the latter noted 'he is serene, assured and courteous, understands as much of psychology as I do of physics, and so we had a very pleasant chat' (quoted in Albrecht Fölsling, Albert Einstein, a biography, tr. Ewald Osers, 1997). Einstein viewed psychoanalysis with varying degrees of scepticism throughout his life.
Einstein on Freud and psychoanalysis, and progress with Mayer on the Unified Field Theory. Einstein announces that he and Mayer together have completed a wonderful bit of work on altogether different lines to those on which he had been working for three years; 'The inner relation between Gravitation and Electricity is now clear. To be sure, the theory does not include a solution of the material problem, but the method is suitable for extension'. In response to Eduard's interests in the area, he has been reading Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, but they have not converted him 'from a Saul to a Paul', and he delivers himself of a scathing criticism of Freud's approach: 'Das meiste scheint mir bei den Haaren herbeigezogen und überaus künstlich, die Methode äusserst unsicher, ja trügerisch' (most of it seems to me very far-fetched and exceedingly artificial, the method exceptionally uncertain, indeed fraudulent).
Einstein had met Freud for the first time in 1926, on which occasion the latter noted 'he is serene, assured and courteous, understands as much of psychology as I do of physics, and so we had a very pleasant chat' (quoted in Albrecht Fölsling, Albert Einstein, a biography, tr. Ewald Osers, 1997). Einstein viewed psychoanalysis with varying degrees of scepticism throughout his life.
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