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Vienna, December 30, 1912,
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Even though tired of writing, I don't want to leave you without a New Year's greeting and a reply to both of your letters. So, cheers to what can be expected to be a difficult 1913!
Rank knew nothing about my intention to accompany him to Budapest. I am also egoistic enough to be just as glad that you turned him down, for only in that way could I do a quick and dirty job of finishing the essay on omnipotence,1 which has been weighing terribly heavily on me. I could also have reproached myself for not having gone to England for my brother's2 eightieth birthday.
I hope the news about your recovery will not turn out to be “greatly exaggerated” this time.3 Will you believe or be angry about the fact that I have read your autoanalytic letter, but I have not studied it as I should have? In so doing I have half frustrated your neurotic intention. So, get something from me by sheer obstinacy!
I have just been totally omnipotence, totally a savage. That's the way one must keep it if one wants to get done with something.
Meynert4 was dictating his psychiatry5 to a (today †)6 colleague when the latter informed him of his planned absence the next day on account of his father-in-law's 70th birthday. The answer was: Kill your father-in-law and come!7
The letter to Jung has not been sent and will not be replaced by another.8 He can go jump in the lake; I don't need him and his friendship any more than I need his falsehoods.
I just came from Don Juan (because of a cancellation from my evening patient). At the point during the dinner scene: “This music seems extraordinarily familiar to me”9 I found a good application to the present situation. Yes, this music also seems very familiar to me. I experienced all this already before 1906, the same objections, the same prophecies, the same proclamations, so I am now done with them. Things went differently. It won't surprise me if things go differently now that the storm is blowing not from o