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.
Budapest, February 16, 1909
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54
Dear Professor,
The case of Stein is still not settled! My impropriety toward him is now being avenged. Still, it occurs to me that he must now be judging me so strictly and unjustly because it outwardly appears as though I accused him in front of you of being an “apostate”—which was the last thing on my
mind. I already sat down to write him—but I couldn't get the letter out. The matter oppresses me all the more, since I owe Stein a great debt of gratitude. It was he who called Jung's work to my attention and engaged in association experiments before me. (To be sure, he was stuck too long with the association game and Bettola1 and only started with real psychoanalysis as a result of my explanations.)
You see how I am searching for excuses!
If you have an idea as to how to settle this matter in some fashion, you would do me a great service by communicating it to me.
Yesterday I gave the lecture in the “Physicians' Association.”2 Owing to unfavorable circumstances there were only a few people in the audience, but they listened very attentively and applauded. The lecture began with the assertion that for the time being we cannot get by without looking at the psychoneuroses from a dualistic perspective. Then came a general overview of the unfounded attempts to explain psychoneuroses and functional psychoses anatomically and physiologically, followed by the purely psychological explanation (hysteria, obsessional neurosis, paranoia, dementia praecox) in your sense, with a few critical remarks about experimental psychology to date. Finally, I went through the therapeutic methods to date (psychotherapy, sanatoria, medications, etc.) and cursorily explained the successes of psychoanalysis. The lecture concluded with an attack against professional colleagues who judge our science without examining it. The way in which they treated Abraham in Berlin gave me the motivation for this.3
Should I translate the lecture into German?
With k