You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Vienna, March 17, 1919
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I have occasion to write to you today because I have to send you the enclosed letter from Jones.1 In order that you learn what is going on outside,2 I am enclosing the simultaneous letter from Sachs—Rank, which I ask to be returned.3
Otherwise, I haven't heard much from you since your wedding; I don't even know whether my response to your announcement arrived.
Not much to say from us, other than what one doesn't like to admit to oneself. Work is still the most gratifying thing.
I miss Rank very much, and also Freund in another sense, but similarly. I finished a 26-page-strong paper on the genesis of masochism, which bears the title A Child Is Being Beaten.4 A second one with the mysterious heading Beyond the Pleasure Principle is in process.5 I don't know if it is the spring with so many colds, or the vegetarian cuisine that suddenly makes me so productive. By the way, they are starting to get more generous in our food management. They want to eliminate meatless weeks and replace them with meatless months. A stupid, hungry joke!
You still don't seem to have achieved anything with the big fund; otherwise I would certainly know about it. The Verlag is working valiantly, but under the stupidest impediments, which can't be removed as long as Rank is absent. Your book on hysteria will certainly be the first to be finished. The War Neuroses6 have been held up by Simmel. The scoundrel has admitted that he still hasn't sent off the manuscript, which is long overdue. I would certainly not have written the introduction (“Foreword”) if communication between you and Jones hadn't been so tied up.—
The summer is a favorite puzzle theme with us. The conversations about it usually end with: One can't plan on anything at all. Today we learned that we won't be permitted to be annexed to Germany, but [we will be permitted] to hand over the south Tirol. I am certainly no patriot, but it is painful to think that more or less the whole wor