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3 June 1913
Pension Gerö, Lipót-körnút 10
Budapest V
Dear Professor Freud,
Well, I am beginning to settle down to the novel life here. Ferenczi seems satisfied that my German is enough for the analysis, and I hope he will also be satisfied with the analytic work itself. It is of course too soon to say much about that yet, but he has already shown me a good many new things about myself. He is very tactful and kind, and I am sure we shall get some good work done, which I both want and need.
The idea of losing my wife has not yet penetrated fully into my mind. I have difficulty in “taking it in”. She has meant so much to me for years, and I held so fast unconsciously on to the Bedingungslosigkeit [unconditionality] of her love, that it will cost me pretty severe depression before getting over the blow of seeing her love given to another, especially her full love, which I had always dreamed of winning. It is of course worse for me that I know how much I have contributed to the present situation. I only hope that happiness for her will be at least a gain amidst the surrounding loss. For me the next year or two will be especially critical, in many ways, so that the help of this analysis comes just at the right time.
One thing that helps to reconcile me to the parting is that her hostility to me seems to have increased, or at all events to have become more manifest. I tried my best in Vienna, in spite of the suddenness of the blow, to behave in the best possible way to her and also to [Herbert] Jones, but it was quite without success. Every remark I would make she would at once snap up, contradict, or else twist into another meaning, and then dispute with the greatest affect. On Saturday night I made a final attempt to get into good relations with her, and succeeded a little by means of agreeing with her (which was not at all true) that our friction that week was due to my “irritability”. Later we had a good talk, and she brought this to the subject of our child. She insisted