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Semmering, August 21, 1928
Dear friend,
I thank you for all the pains that you have taken—and will continue to take—in the Burlingham matter. Despite your warm partisanship in favor of Dr. Amsden, I cannot praise his actions. They seem to me to be weak, sentimental, incautious, and still founded on false assumptions. Thus, he has now requested of Dorothy that she should put together a list of her husband's transgressions, which he will reproach him with. As if that could have any other effect on the insightless patient than to incite him even more against the woman!
The last incident of searching through his correspondence should finally convince him of the patient's complete unreliability. It should be quite out of the question for him to come here for Bob's birthday. I don't trust Burlingham an inch. Dr. Amsden will be responsible for everything that may happen, from which one doesn't gain anything, of course.—
Formally, the information that we, Anna and I, will leave for Berlin on Thursday, the 30th of the month.1
Kind regards,
Freud
Their visit lasted until the end of October or the beginning of November. Cf. Freud's account to his brother: “A graphologist would have to see from my handwriting that I have already lost several teeth. Perhaps also that the absolute certainty of being in the best hands with Schröder is doing me a lot of good. I can still talk and am treating every day [Freud was continuing two analyses] … We are being maintained like grand princes or like newborn babies, according to Anna. The sanatorium, made invisible by a number of trees, is silently at our feet. Dr. Simmel, the chief physician, has handed over to us the first floor of the physicians' villa. Only three pictures of me are hanging on the walls, but I don't need to look at them … Since Schr. has the ambition of carrying out the treatment ‘without professional interruption,’ I can easily absorb all the costs of the enterprise” (Freud to Alexander Freud, Septem