Dr. Ernest Jones comments:

I certainly sympathize with Dr. Balint in his rather painful situation. Naturally it would not occur to me to doubt the faithfulness of his memory or the accuracy of his observations. He omitted to mention, however, that they are quite compatible with a more serious diagnosis, since it is a characteristic of paranoid patients to mislead friends and relatives by exhibiting complete lucidity on most topics.

Nor should I expect Dr. Balint to doubt my own bona fides. What I wrote about Ferenczi's last days was based on the trustworthy evidence of an eye-witness.

The varying value of Ferenczi's last writings remains, as Dr. Balint rightly remarks, controversial. I merely recorded my acquiescence in the opinions expressed so firmly by Freud, Eitingon, and everyone I knew in 1933 that they had been to some extent influenced by subjective personal factors.