Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, April 8, 1911

Budapest, April 8, 1911
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54

Dear Professor,

I find your critique very good, only a bit too tame. I think you ought to take a position here, if only a very general one, against the Adlerian principles

(hermaphroditism, masculine protest). I consider another consultation with Stekel or submitting the paper to him before sending it off superfluous. That is also not in the direction in which you are justifiably heading (throwing them out of the Zentralblatt).

I have not yet read the book1 from cover to cover. In reading the first half I made a few marginal notations, which I am enclosing here. It is a painful task for a clear-thinking person to read through this hodgepodge. Your analogy of “a pig wallowing in a flower bed” is totally applicable. You shouldn't hold that back in your critique, even if it isn't quite proper.

But even if you don't change anything in the paper, it will seem like being freed from a nightmare when at last censure is being voiced from one's own camp against such “sloppiness” [Schlampereien].

There are only four more days separating us from Thursday.2 Please write to me very soon when you decide so I can catch up with you at the proper time. Perhaps we can meet on the way and make part of the journey together.

Kindest regards,

Ferenczi