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[Rundbrief]1
Budapest, December 15, 1924
Dear friends,
I want to respond to the suggestions which have come from London and Berlin individually.
I concur with the Berliners and am in favor of corresponding once a month (on the 15th of every month).
Also in regard to the enlargement of the Committee, I do not share the view that we should wait with that. I would definitely like to make an exception in the case of Fräulein Anna, who is de facto Herr Professor's secretary, and who performed inestimable services for us in the last, difficult negotiations with Rank.
I am, now as before, in favor of keeping the Committee secret as an institution, in order to avoid otherwise unavoidable sensitivities; even the Association could take offense at it on constitutional grounds.
We should diligently cultivate the private intercourse with Brill and decide on his acceptance at the next meeting. But in principle I would also have nothing against his being accepted immediately into the Committee.
I don't need to inform Herr Professor and Eitingon, who were witness to my personal and scientific dispute with Rank, about my position with respect to him. For the time being it should suffice to communicate to the remaining members of the Committee that I condemn most harshly Rank's personal attitude, and that I told him this to his face in front of the Professor, Eitingon, and Fräulein Anna Freud. Regarding the “Trauma of Birth,” I refer to the one-sidedness of his attempt at explanation, to the inadequate presentation of the connection to previous psychoanalytic knowledge. The ucs. birth fantasy deserves our attention, as did earlier the womb fantasy; its explanation from the birth trauma alone is certainly very premature. I completely reject the manner of Rank's technique, which only became known to me from communications from Anna Freud and Brill. There is no discussion of anything of this kind in our joint book; he also never informed me personally about it. I will specify my position on