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9.2.19
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
Dear Frau Andreas
The remark that you have to go to bed at six, because in Göttingen you have no light, has enabled us to endure our deprivations here much more patiently. (Incidentally, the cold which prevails in this room will not make my handwriting any more legible. Also I have long been seeking unsuccessfully for a decent fountain pen.)
Your comments on the infantile neurosis have renewed my admiration for the skill with which you carry further and synthesize what has gone before. Once the analysis has been completed I almost always lose interest. I have long had unexpressed ideas on the question of matriarchy. Where is one to place it? I think, on the basis of the totem-taboo hypothesis, in the period after the fall of the primal father, the period in which the male had not yet brought himself to the point of founding a secondary family, in which therefore the dominant role now fell as a matter of course upon the shoulders of the woman, who had lost her master. Unfortunately, I find it impossible to ascribe a date to the whole early history of the family, although I know that this is essential, if one is to give it its full significance in relation to the other phases of the development of the family.
I did not send you the large volume of the Introductory Lectures, because it is an unaltered impression of the edition in three parts which you already possess. But a word from you that you would also like to have this one-volume edition and it shall be despatched at once. Van Renterghem's Dutch translation of the first half has recently arrived; a second edition of the Leonardo,117 the only truly beautiful thing I have ever written, is in preparation.
Dr. Rank is working energetically at the new psycho-analytic