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8 November 1908, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
I have been paralysed as a correspondent by a mass of work that keeps me gasping, and by a domestic event. My daughter1 has become engaged to a man of her choice, she is to be married in a few months and the young people are creating quite a commotion. I hope that
your work is in full swing again; we must make great progress in this working year, both in our thinking and in our activity.
I have started work on a paper. The title—“A General Exposition of the Psychoanalytic Method”2—tells all. It is getting ahead very slowly; at present I can write only on Sundays, and then only a few pages. In any event it is to round out the second volume of the Collected Papers which Deuticke is prepared to publish and in which “Dora”3 is to reappear. A Mr. Parker of Columbia University4 absolutely insists on having a paper from me; maybe I shall offer him this one, but since, as our translator Brill writes, he is opposed on principle to any mention of sexuality, it seems probable that nothing will come of it. Brill also tells me that you are to contribute an article. He writes that Morton Prince keeps sending out warnings against our “trend.”
I won't say much about the most recent wave of abuse. Forel's attacks5 are chiefly on you, probably out of ignorance. Professor Mehringer in Graz (slips of the tongue)6 is outdoing himself in vicious polemics. Moll's book7 is dishonest and incompetent; a discussion of it is scheduled for our next Wednesday. On the credit side I can now announce that the second edition of The Interpretation of Dreams,8 a copy of which is here on my desk, will reach you in a few days.
Frau C—did actually come to me a fortnight ago; a very serious case of obsessional neurosis, improvement is bound to be very slow.
The reason for her preference for me was that Thomsen9 had advised her against me, saying that treatment by me would only make her condition much worse. But that fell in with her need for punishme