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Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Sigm. Freud
Redigiert von Dr. M. Eitingon Dr. S. Ferenczi und Dr. Sándor Radó
Baden-Baden, June 30, 1927
Werderstrasse 14.
Dear Professor,
Many thanks for your welcome-greeting, which I received in London. I feel much better on European soil—indeed, I would say that I think back on the whole American adventure as if on a dream. It was perhaps only a flight out of the world of reality. The fact that it was, nevertheless, something real is proved by the sum of money that I have saved up and that increased somewhat toward the end; it amounts, not to double, but to three times what I saved annually during the last few years in Budapest. I hope that the possession of this, albeit modest, fortune will make it possible for me to give fewer hours and to dedicate somewhat more time to science. To do both evidently requires a capacity for accomplishment which we admired in you but sought in vain to imitate.
Now I will share with you the last chapter of my Argonaut journey. In New York, I worked almost up to the last hour. I am not dissatisfied with the result of my work. I seem to have shaken the movement, at least temporarily, out of a state of indolence. Even the New York group, which usually has so little interest in the common cause, seems to have thought better of it: they want to hold meetings more frequently than only once a month; they talk about courses, about founding an institute, etc. To be sure, I don't know to what extent they will hold to it if no one is breathing down their necks. The bigwigs: Brill, Oberndorf, Stern, Kardiner, Monroe Meyer, consistently kept their distance from me. Brill and Oberndorf even excused themselves from the little farewell party that my wife and I gave at the hotel. Jelliffe and approximately twenty other New Yorkers honestly wanted to learn; but it was difficult to get anything across to them in ten seminar evenings, except perhaps the fact that they still have a lot