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Dear Friends:
To Ferenczi's question about the Vorkongress, I think we decided that our main meeting would be after the Congress (? Potsdam) and that only two or three hours would be necessary beforehand for business, as distinct from social, meeting. I presume there will be a reception on the evening before the Congress, i.e. on Sunday the 24th. From London the trains arrive in Berlin in the evening; I do not know how it is from Vienna. About guest cards, I suggest that Abraham gets 200 printed (all in German) and then sends an appropriate number to each society, the rule being that no one is admitted to the congress without such a card. Each member's card should be signed by the secretary of his society, and each guest's card by one of the presidents. Is this agreed?
About holidays. I shall only be able to take a couple of weeks this year, so that all correspondence can be sent as usual to my London address.
I was interested in the various remarks about underbidding. From the English side I would say that fees lower than two guineas constitute underbidding, for there is no analyst in London who would not take a case for this fee or less. In addition you should all not be too modest to remember that you are far more capable and experienced analysts than anyone in England, so that you have every right to charge corresponding fees. I mentioned already that Rivers died suddenly. He will be greatly missed, but not by psycho-analysts.
My opinion about accepting critical articles for the Z or J is in the negative so long as the motives of the criticism spring from tendentious resistances, which is usually not difficult to establish, but to accept those that are of positive value, even if they are not written from our own standpoint. For instance I can conceive a useful article correlating psa conclusions with the new work on endocrinology by someone who is properly informed on both sides, just as Sperber's famous article on the origin of language.2 I can even imagine a valua