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Vienna, October 7, 1924
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Federn was with me, behaved very well, and made a suggestion to me which for the moment eliminates completely the difficulties with Rank. He thinks I shouldn't resign yet, because no successor is available, but request an extended sick leave, as it were, while I accept reelection. I will do that.
I have five hours of work, but a sixth will always be added, either a walk-in or a foreign patient, or both. I can't give up seeing foreigners, for everyone is doing very badly, including Nunberg.1 Yesterday I was able to send Federn his first patient. Today I will talk to [Helene] Deutsch, tomorrow to Dr. Meng from Stuttgart.2 My next step will be to call up Frau Kraus, who wants to build the polyclinic, in order to bring light into this matter.
I am naturally also of the opinion that you refrain from any encouragement with Rank; you should only clarify what he intends to do. Jones writes that he has bad reports about him from four or five quarters. “The disparaging remarks about both your person and your work are the most painful though the most comprehensible”3—he thinks. Meanwhile, one mustn't forget how unreliable people's talk is. It would, however, fit his letters.
I greet you and Frau G. cordially.
Yours,
Freud
See letter 641, n. 2.
Heinrich Meng (1887-1972), M.D., analysand of Paul Federn and Hanns Sachs . He was a member of the Berlin Society , and from 1929 to 1933 he lived in Frankfurt, later, until his death, in Basel (Switzerland), where he was docent for “psychohygiene” at the university. Meng was especially interested in the prophylaxis of neuroses. He was editor, with Federn, of Das Psychoanalytische Volksbuch [The Psychoanalytic Chapbook] (Stuttgart, 1926); with Ernst Schneider of the Zeitschrift für psychoanalytische Pädagogik (1926ff.); and with Ernst Freud of a selection from the Freud-Pfister correspondence (Frankfurt am Main, 1963). See , “Mit Kupfer legieren: Zu