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Montreux, Hotel Eden,
September 1, 1924
Dear Professor,
Before I go more closely into the details of your last, so significant letter, I want above all to tell you that it goes without saying that I am prepared to perform any service to which psychoanalysis, i.e., you, calls me, and that in the event—which, let us hope, won't transpire—of a break with Rank, I will also assume the editorial tasks. I will return to the personal difficulties and the disadvantages of such a personnel change, but for the moment I would like to occupy myself with the factual parts of the matter, which cannot, to be sure, be entirely separated from the personal.—
You recall, perhaps—I already referred to it in an earlier letter—, that it was you who acquainted me with Rank's particularly ingenious, significant discovery, with expressions of your greatest satisfaction (at the time the expression about the truth content of 66 to 33% also came out). Rank, with whom I was at the time working jointly on the technical essay, had up to then communicated nothing to me about his birth theory; he can be very close-mouthed, you know.—The matter captivated me immediately, from a theoretical standpoint; but the practical examples that he brought made no impression, either on you or on me.—But when I began to turn my attention to the mother-role of the analyst, I found the most remarkable confirmations from the most diverse quarters (among the patients). Under the impression of these [confirmations] (which were especially strong among the anxiety hysterics), I amplified my analytic work usually with these attempts at interpretation, which, as mentioned, the patients entered into. To be sure, I was far and away not as skilled as Rank in sniffing out the paths of connection between almost every psychic utterance, every symptom of the patient, and the birth trauma, and I always left the question open as to whether there existed an inability on my part or an exaggeration on his part. I continued my analyses in