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[Göttingen, 18 June 1925]
Dear Professor,
I thank you quite particularly for your prompt reply. Despite what you call ‘apparently cruel’ in your advice, it corresponds entirely to my own view; in B … stein, during Herr A. E.'s first attempt to make trouble, I already said to myself: if he were financially responsible for the treatment, the only proper course on my part would be to fling his contract back in his face. But (I did not realize that you did not know) the analysis is being financed, not by him, but by Frau E.'s father, who has taken his daughter off his son-in-law's hands for the duration of the treatment. He has paid for the analysis from the start as well as his daughter's entire expenses; the son-in-law has not played any part in this whatsoever. In this way the father hoped that this time, the last time, the treatment would for a change not be interfered with, which had happened several times before through the husband's agency. And so the situation is that I should only disappoint the hopes of her father, old Herr B., who has complied strictly and precisely with all our wishes and demands. I have no concern with Herr A. E. as far as the analysis goes. I have now replied straightaway to the court that I have handed on to Frau M. E. the letter which the lawyer wrote to me and therewith withdraw from the whole affair, since Herr A. E.'s decisions did not concern me and in no way affected the arrangements which Frau E.'s father had made with me regarding her. Since the father in B. must now find his own lawyer, the whole affair can proceed without interfering with our analytic work: just like any other piece of misfortune which intrudes into the treatment.
The fact that this clear line of demarcation has been established I owe to you alone. I began to realize that I was taking the interruption to the treatment too emotionally. I had become too elated at the gradual improvement in face of the difficulties involved. I now, I believe, see the position as it is