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Vienna, November 6, 1917
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I haven't written to you in a long time and also didn't hear from you until yesterday. In general, I am impatient for you; things are going forward too slowly for me, and I wouldn't like to have Annerl go to Budapest until you and Frau G. have a guest room prepared for her. Incidentally, the rest of us are not in a mood to travel; the High Command asks imploringly to refrain from all travel, and is in the meantime making things as uncomfortable as it can.
Not a word has arrived from Martin since the beginning of the offensive, October 23, nor from others who are there.1 Oli is writing very contentedly from his new post on the border of Bukovina-Bessarabia, where they are building bridges. Ernst will be here until the middle of November, to everyone's satisfaction, and then he goes to Szombathely, but he has requested a transfer to Vienna. When he leaves there he will visit you in Budapest.
The crush is continuing with me, eight or nine analyses a day, three persons “in line” until it's their turn. (I hope you have properly raised your fee.) Things are going very well for me in this, only abstinence from tobacco is not compatible with such work. Yesterday I smoked away my last cigar, and since then I have been grumpy and tired, got heart palpitations and an increase in the painful swelling of my gums (carcinoma? etc.), which has been noticeable since the meager days. Then a patient brought me fifty cigars, I lit one, became cheerful, and the gum irritation rapidly abated! I wouldn't have believed it, if it weren't so striking. Totally Groddeck.
The Taboo of Virginity is finished. I will now get the essay on melancholia ready for publication.2 Otherwise, I am mostly occupied with what I see in the patients, primarily the consciousness of guilt.
Kind regards,
Freud