You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
17.xi.24
Dearest Lou
I thank you very much for the interest you show in my two new preoccupations, the Rank affair and the prosthesis affair. You would be surprised if you knew how much more concerned I am about the prosthesis than about Rank. Perhaps you would see in this a proof of the increase of narcissism in old age. In any case I have adjusted myself inwardly to Rank, which I have not yet done with the prosthesis, although it is a more external matter. But I am doing all that is asked of me and have no pain, only annoying discomfort.
At least there is more to say about the Rank affair than about the other. And since you are interested in the history of this affair, I will tell you how it seems to me, though part of it remains a mystery to me too. I can assess it as calmly as I do because I cannot find that I am in any way to blame for what has happened. It is true, he asserts that I have treated him badly and inconsistently, but he has got to say that in order to excuse his defection to himself. I do not think he is likely to find much credence in this.
To judge this case aright, one must see it from the ‘base human’ point of view, to quote Heine's poem Firdusi.175 He felt his livelihood to be threatened by my illness and its dangers, looked round for a place of refuge, and hit upon the idea of making his appearance in America. It is really a case of the rat leaving the sinking ship. As his behaviour shows, it cannot have been easy for him. He goes around with a terribly bad conscience, makes a hangdog impression, and looks extremely unhappy and embarrassed when he is cornered by being asked about his motives. His act of self-preservation was made possible for him through several circumstances: first, through a very severe father-complex and the neurosis based on it, which was not at all times a latent one; secondly, through the practice of analysis, which shatters all artificial constructions and can actually cancel out the analyst's own su