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[Rundbrief]1
Budapest, March 15, 1925
Dear friends:
The most important event of the last few weeks for me was my visit with Herr Professor and the conversation with Rank. I was anticipating this meeting with great discomfort, but was pleasantly disappointed by the great change which I was able to ascertain in him. In a personal regard, the most striking thing is that no trace has remained of the taciturnity and obvious dishonesty that we had to reproach him with in the last big discussion in November. He has complete insight into the pathological [aspect] of his attitude at the time, as well as his presence on his first visit to America, which he tried to make good to the fullest extent of his powers by means of the second. He expressed the hope that he would succeed in restoring, just as he did the relationship to the Professor, which was clouded by his father complex, also the one to the members of the former Committee; he made a beginning with me—but he seems to put a great value on also establishing personal contact with Berlin and London as soon as possible. From a scientific respect he seems to be holding fast to the basic idea of his thesis (trauma of birth), but he has insight into the methodological errors of his work and anticipates the critique which is to be published with the good intention of allowing himself to be taught. He attempted to justify theoretically his technical modifications, but he seems to have gained insight into their exaggeratedness. He does, to be sure, reduce a portion of the rumors about his technique to a misapprehension of his statements.
I just received the critical work by Sachs about the “Trauma of Birth,”2 to which I had only little to add. I wrote these particulars directly to friend Hanns.
It should interest you to know that we made a series of rather successful thought transference experiments in Vienna with Professor and Fräulein Anna.3
Life in the Society here is quite animated. We recently accepted a new member, Dr. Alexander