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Sorrento, Hotel Vittoria,
September 16, 1925
Dear Professor,
I am writing on the terrace of my hotel room, before me the Gulf of Naples, the weather splendid, somewhat cool, perhaps, at least in the morning. Difficult to put myself back into the trains of thought that one had in the arduous days of the Congress.—My general impression was, as I already wrote, extremely favorable. The oppressive mood which reigned in Salzburg because of Rank's strange behavior had lifted. The personal intercourse between Rank and the members of the Committee was—if not very intimate, nonetheless not inimical or cool. Rank's personal behavior was normal and friendly. His scientific discussions somewhat roundabout, also difficult for me to understand. Only this much seemed evident, that he now attempted to present the dogma of the trauma theory as a problem; nevertheless, he holds fast, so it seems, theoretically and technically, to giving notice and to the repetition of the trauma in the cure. He1 had little success, one didn't understand him.2 The lectures by Reik and Reich were good. (The latter [was] somewhat too fine in his differentiation, on the other hand, not clear enough in his conception of the actual- and psychoneuroses.) Of the Americans, Coriat3 was especially good; he seems to be the best among the Americans. Pierce Clark4 was too optimistic; he uses a modification of my “forced fantasies,” and with it he claims to cure all