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Vienna, January 20, 1930
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend! (without parapraxis)
Your good letter strengthens my confidence that the ill feeling between us will not be of long duration. So little trace of annoyance has remained with me that I myself was amused by some passages of your confession, after I had gotten over the initial reaction that something like that is possible at all between us. E.g., when you reproach me for having neglected the
foreseeable negative reactions in your analysis. Whereby you fail to consider that this analysis goes back fifteen years, and that at the time we were by no means so sure that these reactions could be expected in every case. At least, I wasn't. You yourself [should] consider how long this analysis would have had to last until the inimical impulses in our excellent relationship had succeeded in getting through.
No, I sooner have the impression that you—probably as a result of the presumed slighting in the presidential election—reactivated the remnants of your earlier neurosis and for that reason also became so sensitive toward the rudeness of the “brothers,” after you had previously so brilliantly corrected your brother complex as the leader of the Budapest group. But actually, we are both too old for such youthful pranks—I hope your youthfulness will not take umbrage anew at this equivalency. In reality, we should be content with determining that the theoretical differences between us also don't go any further than is unavoidable with two different workers when they don't have a constant exchange of thoughts and along with that mutual influencing!
On another side, I will gladly admit to you that my patience with neurotics runs out in analysis, and that in life I am inclined to intolerance toward them. Especially earlier—so, fifteen years ago—I lived in the hope that one could rely on a kind of letting the not directly addressed abnormal reactions be swept along. Certainly, in so doing, I behaved like that less potent man who told