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Dr. S. Ferenczi
Budapest, I. Lisznyai U. 11.
Telefon: 573-87
Budapest, May 1, 19321
Dear Professor,
The quiet reproach that issues forth from your letter is well deserved. To be quite honest, I was prepared for worse; in any event, I reproached myself
much more energetically. But since you yourself mention the only excuse that I can give for my negligence, it is easier for me to talk about it. In the last few years I have, in fact, been very, perhaps all too immersed in the work of understanding my cases. Whatever the favoring motive of such isolation may be, it is not altogether anything bad or reprehensible; everyone probably has to go through such periods, which, with me, to be sure, turned up somewhat late, or, as you once wrote, as a belated puberty crisis. More deeply penetrating self-analysis showed me, to be sure, that since my earliest childhood I have had the tendency to get into situations which I could master only with an exceptionally large exertion of strength. I never allowed myself a real psychic vacation. Now I seem to want to rest up after a kind of superperformance lasting half a lifetime; by rest, I understand here immersing myself in a kind of scientific “Poetry and Truth,”2 from which at some time or other, sometimes I think: definitely, something not worthless will come. I don't believe that one can deliberately change such an attitude, and so my feeling of responsibility commands me to ask you if you want to have a president whose interest is in part manacled in this way? If so, then I will do my utmost to fulfill the tasks that are before me. But should you be of the opinion that much more is demanded of this activity in today's hard times than I can offer, then I will renounce the role of leader without the slightest bitterness. Indeed, I am quite willing to be of assistance to you in the selection of the person who is suited. A special personal difficulty is my relative ineptitude in economic questions, where assuring the activity of the Verl