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Badgastein, 1.8.19
Villa Wassing
Dear Frau Andreas
I have been here since 15.7. and received your letter of the 7th on 22 July, but then delayed answering, because I thought I might have something further to send you. But this has not happened, and all I can reveal is that the Everyday Life, to which you yourself have contributed this time, is on its way to you.
In your role as problem discoverer you have broached an interesting case in your last letter, to which I can only say that apparent normality in sexual matters is most readily to be found in obsessional neurotics, who derive their inhibitions from the fact that they are fighting their feminine attitude to the father. Furthermore, the obsessional neurosis is often cured spontaneously especially with the help of favourable female influence, only leaving behind inhibited and somewhat eccentric characters.
Poor Tausk,124 whom you for some time favoured with your friendship, committed suicide on 3.7. He returned worn out from the horrors of war, was faced with the necessity of building up under the most unfavourable circumstances the practice in Vienna which he had lost through being called up for military service, had intended to remarry only a week later—but decided otherwise. His farewell letters to his fiancée, his first wife and to me were all equally affectionate, insisted on his clarity of mind, blamed only his own inadequacy and his failure in life; they gave therefore no clue to his last act. In his letter to me he swore undying loyalty to psychoanalysis, thanked me etc. But what was behind it all we cannot guess. After all he spent his days wrestling with the father ghost. I confess that I do not really miss him; I had long realized that he could be of no further service, indeed that he constituted a threat to the future. I had an opportunity of taking a glance or two at the foundations on which his high-flown sublimations rested; and I would have dropped him long ago if you hadn't raised him so in my estima