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Vienna, June 6, 1926
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I had a specific reason for postponing the reply to your last letter; about that later. Today I received your official telegram about the festive gathering1 and ask you to convey my most heartfelt thanks to the Society.
It is no surprise to me that you won't decide so easily to move to Vienna. There also exists no necessity that would be tantamount to being summoned to service for the cause; you remain master of your decisions. If they lead you to America, then I can only hope that this journey will not signify the disappointment that some predict. I don't think it necessarily has to be that way. To be sure, one would have an easier time there with Rank's character traits.
With that, we have arrived at the theme of Rank. His demon is egging him on to a course where there is no stopping and no turning back. His whole behavior is evidently calculated to cut the tablecloth between us and him, and he must succeed. I, too, have not yet thoroughly studied his book (Anna has it), but I have read enough of it to have an opinion. Everything is much worse than I had imagined. The worst thing that people said about his technique is confirmed here. Its main character is crafty perspicacity without critique, an unusable work attitude. He combines the worst errors of those who have fallen away from us; like Stekel, he acknowledges boundless arbitrariness in the interpretation of dreams, like Adler, he sees, of all analytic reactions, only one, the struggle for the undisturbed possession of the mother object; Adler, the striving to be superior to authority (of the father). Both occur naturally; they don't need to be discovered.
One thing strikes me personally, an insinuation, which, [while] not clearly articulated, is in and of itself not at all nice. He interprets the wolf-dream