Correspondence

I should be grateful if you could give me the opportunity of saying a few words to the paper "Footnote to the Genesis of Moses" by M. Naftalin, M.D., which you published in Volume XXVII, 403-405, 1958, of your Quarterly.

Dr. Naftalin, reading the English edition of "Moses and Monotheism" is struck by the apparently incorrect rendering of the Hebrew word "Ruach", (animus, spiritus, breath, wind) = smoke, and quoting Jones I, II and III, he indulges in the analyst's favourite pastime of analysing Freud, finishing his paper with a reference (in rather poor taste) to Freud's last illness. When Dr. N's attention is drawn to the fact that in the original German Edition of "Moses und Monotheismus", "Ruach" is correctly given as "Hauch" (breath, wind) he must realise that this will take any wind out of his sails and his story would go up in smoke; as the German book was originally printed in Holland because of the war, a theory is now evolved making the Dutch printer the culprit, and suggesting that he used the correct word "Hauch" in error only, instead of the wrong one "Ruach" = smoke. All is well again and the paper gets into print.

One look into Freud's handwritten manuscript shows, however, that the word used is without doubt "Hauch".

Don't you agree, Sir, that unscholarly behaviour like this cannot but harm the reputation of serious psychoanalytic research?

I am,

Yours faithfully,