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Budapest, December 26, 1918
Dear Professor,
Another year gone by—and what a year! I think we still actually have no idea of the emotional effect that the upheaval of the last twelve months will have on us all. No lesser, however, is the test of strength that we will be subjected to in the near future; the completely new conditions will in any case exhaust the full extent of our adaptive capability.—Truly, no shining prospect.
The only thing that kept me going in these days and still keeps me going is the optimism that I owe to the circumstance that, as a collaborator in psychoanalysis, I feel I belong to an intellectual movement which is without a doubt a part of the future. Considered sub specie psychoanalysis, the terrible events appear only as episodes of a still very primitive social organization.—And even if the optimism were false and humanity remained a victim of its own unconscious to the end: we were still granted the opportunity to look behind the scenes, and the knowledge of the truth can also compensate us for much that one must otherwise renounce, and also for much suffering.
To be sure, I find it shameful that the creator of the science which gives all values a new meaning has, after so many decades, not even found so much understanding in his own fatherland that the people, in their own interest, didn't even look to him rather than to those who are ignorant. If ever a city undeservedly achieved recognition for having been the birth-place of a new idea it is Vienna.—I admit that I am vengeful enough to reflect over how one could reward the Viennese for the disgraceful reception they gave to psychoanalysis.—The Vienna school of Ψα.—with the exception of the incomparable Rank and Dr. Sachs—was also never actually on a high plane.—I won't abandon the idea that you may yet move to Budapest.—
Certainly, a free,—but dirt-poor Hungary has arisen out of the proud—but feudal—Hungary in the few months since we last saw each other. It is very doubtful how things will