The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / by Georg Groddeck. Authorized translation furnished and revised by the author.

  • Georg Groddeck
Date:
1928
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / by Georg Groddeck. Authorized translation furnished and revised by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE BOOK OF THE IT* LETTER I So, my dear, you want me to write to you, and it is to be nothing personal or gossipy. I am not to make fine phrases but to be serious, instructive, and, as far as possible, scientific. That’s tiresome! What has my humble self to do with science? The small amount one requires as a practising physician I cannot display to you, or you would see the holes in the gown with which, as qualified physicians, we are officially endowed. Perhaps, how¬ ever, I shall meet your wishes if I tell you why I became a doc¬ tor, and how it was that I turned my back on science. I do not remember that as a boy I had any special liking for the profession of medicine, and I am very certain that, neither then nor later, did I bring any humanitarian feeling into it; if, as may well be, I used to deck myself out with such noble senti¬ ments, you must look upon my lying with a lenient eye—I be¬ came a doctor just because my father was one. He had for¬ bidden all my brothers to follow that career, probably because he wanted to convince himself and other people that his financial difficulties were due to a doctor’s wretched remuneration, which was certainly not the case, since his praises were sung by young and old alike, and he was correspondingly rewarded. But he liked, just as his son does, and indeed every one of us, to look for outside causes when he knew that something was out of har¬ mony within himself. One day he asked me—I don’t know why—whether I would not like to be a doctor, and because I looked upon this enquiry as a mark of distinction which set me above my brothers, I said yes. With that my fate was sealed, as regards both my choice of a profession and the manner in which I have followed it. For from that moment I consciously imitated my father to such a degree that an old friend of his, when she came to know me many years later, broke out with the * Authorized translation of Das Buch vom Es, Psychoanalytische Briefe an eine Freundin, Internationaler Psychoanalytische Verlag, Leipzig, Wien, Zurich, 1923, furnished and revised by the Author. The It is rendered J4~or Es by the translator. [1]