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Vienna, June 15, 1917
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I am very sorry that your daily work now totally exhausts you so that nothing is left over for collection and production. I am suffering from the
opposite, I have only three hours at the moment and am bored; but the result is always the same. Both ways obviously don't strike the optimum.
You can report to Dr. Róheim that Imago will certainly bring out his paper in 1917, if only he sends the translation very soon, and that we have no problem with the fact that the Hungarian edition is a little early. It's just that Imago in particular is presently in need.
In your reaction against Dr. Groddeck I again find a long-standing characteristic trait in you, the tendency to leave a stranger standing outside. Well, he would like to be that way himself, and is in fact begging not to be recognized as an analyst. I replied to him that I can't do him the service,1 held up to him his two main sins, his banal ambition as well as his philosophical one-sidedness, for his experiences naturally don't justify his denying the difference between psychic and physical, but rather show only an—unsuspected—strength of the Ψ factor. Now, I am curious as to how he will respond. I am prepared to share your doubts about some of the things he says. But the whole thing is pressing toward our work on Lamarck.
I naturally don't know how far Tatra-Lomnicz is from Csorba and how comfortable traveling is in between, but I foresee ample opportunity to see Frau G., which we will all take advantage of. The impossibility of having a third room is very hard, and nothing else will make up for it.
In the world outside I take it to be a certainty that the war will continue until the Americans get into it,2 and with that the hope of peace for 1917 will disappear. According to one's mood, one can expect the worst from the fourth year of the war. Luckily, one has to leave room for totally incalculable factors and events. It is not nice.
Cordially,
Freud