This is what Freud wrote to a woman concerned about her son’s homosexuality

In our world that exists in the extreme poles of political correctness and incorrectness the fading significance of Sigmund Freud is a natural corollary. So when on September 23, his death anniversary, as the Guardian points out, the celebration was limited to a single Tweet, and that also from the Freud Museum, it did not come as a surprise. On the man after whose death W.H. Auden had written “to us no more a person/ now but a whole climate of opinion”, perhaps not keeping in mind that climates too are susceptible to change, our opinions have been clouded because we choose to differ with his theories on many grounds. Yet Freud lives on subconsciously in our minds, surfacing in every Freudian slip, and in works of art, and in daily lives, he shadows us like the Kafkas and Dostoevskys who were aware of the primitive in us.

An example, even if not a remarkable one, is Freud’s letter written in 1935 to a woman seeking “cure” for her son’s homosexuality. The response was very much in keeping with Freud’s view on homosexuality and thought of the time, yet it was bold in its negation of one’s sexual preference as a disease, and recognized that there was no shame in being who you are.

Here’s the illegible original, because it is all cool and nerdy to have tried to make sense of the illegible just because, after all, that is what is original.

And here’s a transcript in legible letters, because we knew you will have to come here.

April 9th 1935

PROF. DR. FREUD

Dear Mrs [Erased],

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime — and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs on a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me — I don’t expect you will — he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with best wishes,

Freud

P.s. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.

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(This is Freud and us thanking LettersofNote.)