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[Semmering,] Villa Schüler,
June 24, 1926
Dear friend,
You will have received in the meantime my reply which is due you. Rank's statements on pages 16-181 are perhaps not the right point of departure for the critique. Even though he also distorts things here. He is completely under the impression of the “Infantile Neurosis,”2 in which he also sinned with the childhood dream. But I never set up a rule that one has to terminate every treatment of an obsessional neurosis by setting a date, but in this case I found the indication for the rule (one work year earlier) in the fact that the patient was well, wasn't accomplishing anything more, and evidently didn't want to give up the protection of the transference against independence.
When Rank finds himself in the “comfortable position,” he isn't referring to a communication from me, but rather to his own interpretation of the termination of the treatment as “rebirth,” about which I am not at all convinced.
I am not at all well in these—beautiful—days.
Cordially,
Freud
The second number is not clearly legible; the last digit could be an “8” which has been written over a “9” or a “9” which has been written over an “8.”
The analysis of the “Wolf-Man,” published under the title “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” (Freud 1918b), to the termination of which Freud had applied the method of giving notice.