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15 November 1907, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend and colleague,1
I always find that my day has begun well when the post brings me an invitation to a meeting of the society you have named after me; unfortunately it is usually too late for me to take the express and arrive on time. What you say of your inner developments sounds reassuring; a transference on a religious basis would strike me as most disastrous; it could end only in apostasy, thanks to the universal human tendency to keep making new prints of the clichés we bear within us. I shall do my best to show you that I am unfit to be an object of worship. You probably think that I have already begun. In my last letter I was irritable and sleepy; soon afterward I pulled myself together and said to myself very much what you point out to me in your letter, to wit, that we have every reason for satisfaction. And besides, we must not make the mistake of judging the ferment exclusively by the literary bubbles it sends up. The most significant transformations are not necessarily the result of any explicit publication. One fine day one simply notices that they have taken place.
Despite his uncle's reassuring preface, Binswanger's publication, emanating from one of the citadels of orthodoxy, will create a furore in Germany. In any case what you have done with the boy was a brilliant move. Do you think he has enough toughness and endurance to establish a focus of infection one day?
Yesterday I received a paper by Warda2 from the volume in honour of Binswanger sr. He means well, as he has already shown in early publications, but he seems without talent, one of those who can't take