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The International Psycho-Analytical Press
22 May 1922
Dear Professor,
At last I come to write, though I wish there were a wireless telephone between London and Vienna. My secretary has left suddenly and I have in her place a congenital imbecile, which involves double work. I hope the indisposition of which you speak was a slight one and now over, though I am sure you are eagerly looking forward to the holidays. It is too bad that you should be troubled over all these business matters, but you would plunge into them instead of entrusting them to me. You are eager to relieve me, and I you, it seems. But you have worked enough otherwise to be able to leave such matters to your representatives, and I should like to take you at your word as you put it in your letter that you are willing to drop the matter of the Press.
This brings me to a matter I am very loth to speak of, and I will tell you why. I wanted to leave Mrs. Riviere in peace to her analysis without disturbance; also I did not want to risk a further discord being sown between us by your quoting passages from my letters, which has already happened. But it seems impossible to avoid the subject, for she has cleverly managed to introduce into her analysis with you the same difficulty as happened with me, namely the intermixture of analytical considerations with external actual ones; perhaps it was unavoidable on her part. Now, however, it seems impossible to postpone, as I had hoped, the latter set of considerations until her analysis was over. Otherwise it may be too late to remedy matters.
First a few words on the analytic side. Her story of my unkindness is, so far as I can see, a pure myth. She is known in the Society as my favourite, people wonder why I endure her behaviour, and I have never treated any other patient with such consideration, in both feeling and conduct. But every proof of kindness on my part was always ignored or taken as her natural right as a matter-of-course, or even regarded as an insult. O