Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, November 8, 1909

Budapest, November 8, 1909
Dear Professor,

Here I come again with a long epistle and a mass of extras.

I. I am sending enclosed the dream lecture in German. I also happened to send it to my brother in Berlin with a request that he improve it stylistically. I am indebted to him for a few useful expressions; he has, however, made some unnecessary changes, partly out of insufficient knowledge of the subject matter, partly out of an exaggerated desire to Germanize everything (as is the custom in Berlin), so that I had to restore these passages and have the whole work retranscribed. On the whole, I am astonished at his relatively very significant insight into the psychoanalytic way of looking at things. Heretofore he has read nothing but my lectures. Only now is he getting your works.—

II. Now to the main thing.

The Seidler case has reached a more serious stage, owing to a second, successful experiment. I want to treat the matter pragmatically, and therefore I am sending you all the pieces of evidence in the original, as before.

In the envelope marked “I”1 you will find the three pieces of paper with writing on them that were presented to Frau Seidler. To wit:

1. the fragment of a letter written in blue ink on blueish paper and marked at the end “3 B.” It comes from that painter (Schramm),2 whose name I had such a hard time remembering on board the Washington. My

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   brother doesn't know of its existence, even less about its significance for me and about its role in the life of Frau Isolde, to whom the letter is addressed. (My brother is equally unaware of the last point.) On the next to the last (torn) page I transformed the word artist [Künstler] into the nonsense word Bärdiar; above that I changed the word canvas [Leinwand] into something like “Kaügründ” (meaningless). The signature is illegible; the addressee could read it, of course; it says: Festö bácsi (= Uncle Painter). Afterwards I reproached myself for not having altered this word, so I asked my brother directly who he tho