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29 April 1928
81 Harley Street, London
Dear Professor,
My delay in thanking you for your very kind letter is a sign of the mental paralysis which has restricted my activity to only the most urgent things. The only meeting I have brought myself to in the past weeks was that of the ψα Committee of the British Medical Assoc.,1 where of course my presence was quite indispensable, but from this week I am resuming attendance at the ψα Society which Glover had taken over. When in Mentone2 I went carefully through the excellent translation of the Zukunft einer Illusion, which Strachey had previously revised; it goes to the printer tomorrow. That, with patients and a few letters, is the whole record of my external activities in this time.
My main problem is my wife. While the catastrophe affected me as deeply and as painfully as her, it has had a more disintegrating effect on her. It is not only the loss of something ineffably precious and wonderful, but of something that for complicated psychological reasons was vitally necessary to her existence, or at least mental stability. Brave as she is, and trained by bitter experience to endure, she is finding it barely possible to face our bleak future (for as far as one can tell further children would appear to be out of the question). This naturally reacts on me, for my own vitality and hopefulness have suffered such a blow as to diminish my powers of helping her. The painfulness of the Trauerarbeit is made excruciating by the horrible memories of what the child suffered, and our spasms of hope to the last; one can only pray that the Usur of time3 will be effective in at least this aspect.
You see it is hard for me to write about any other subject than the one that engrosses my energy. Grateful as I was for the warmth and thoughtfulness