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Vienna XIX, Strassergasse 47
13. 6. 1935
Dear Meister Arnold,
A letter to or from Palestine takes so long that I am replying to you on the day I receive it. I write to you with pleasure and with special ease and I notice that I write many things to you which I would withhold from others. In addition I have a lot of free time: i.e. very few hours of analysis. People seem to have learnt that I am fairly old and they no longer flock to me; accordingly I am slowly declining but there ought to be a process of self-regulation between the cause and the effect.
As to your questions:1 no, I have not received any proofs from you and I do not know which ones I should be expecting. My son Oliver lives in Nice, where he has taken over the direction of a photographic business. In this way he has at any rate found work which satisfies his practical urges.
As far as my own productivity goes, it is like what happens in analysis. If a particular subject has been suppressed, nothing takes its place and the field of vision remains empty. So do I now remain fixated on the Moses, which has been laid aside and on which I can do no more. When may I read it to you?
If your analysis has not been able to disperse the infantile amnesia, it has certainly not shown its full power. This is not the fault of the analyst. It often happens, especially in the case of people of a practical turn of mind in whom no severe sufferings or inhibitions maintain a strong conflict.
A proper analysis is a slow process. In some cases I myself have only been able to uncover the core of the problem after many years, not, it is true, of continuous analysis, and I was not able to say where I had gone wrong in my technique. It is the exact opposite of a mountebank like O. Rank2 who