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Karlsbad, August 8, 1912
Dear friend,
I haven't heard anything from you for a long time.
Above all, accept my thanks for your congratulatory telegram1 and direct them also to that lady highly esteemed by you,2 who customarily makes a direct reply on my part impossible and who this time understood how to write in such a particularly moving way.
Our stay is nearing its end. On Friday we are going to Munich–Bolzano; on the 15th there will be a family gathering before the trip to Karersee. Our state of health here was excellent, and I am expecting a long-lasting good effect. Correspondences and answers to wishes have taken up much time. In the last few days the isolation could no longer be maintained. Frau Stegmann was here yesterday, and Jekels is expected today.
I wasn't able to do anything here but finish my contribution to the debate on masturbation.3 I received the best confirmations of my totem hypothesis from the book by Robertson Smith on Religion of the Semites.4
Yesterday I got a letter from Jung that made it possible for me to reply. He wrote about Bleuler's taking over the Jahrbuch for as long as he is absent,5 about Rank's book,6 to which he connected his critique of incest, and he remarked that he would put his presidency up for discussion at the next Congress, so that it can decide whether “deviations” are permitted. In addition, he gives renewed assurance that it doesn't occur to him to overcome the father in the manner of Adler. I replied,7 while matter-of-factly dropping the friendly form of address, that it was no compliment to the Congress if he did that. The right to divergent views is unquestionable. If the divergence went as far as it did with Adler (elimination of the ucs., repression, infantile sexuality), then he should ask himself in any event what sense it would make to sail under the same flag. Nothing would justify the assumption that his modifications involve such an estrangement from our basic views; his words are in direct opposition to that.