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29 November 1908, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
No, the dawn is not yet. We must carefully tend our little lamp, for the night will be long. To all the items which you have read and to which you have called my attention I add a publication by Steyerthal in Hoche's series, What Is Hysteria?1 It is worth reading. The
happy author is from Mecklenburg, if he has a shirt a famous problem is solved.2 Without knowing the personal circumstances, I interpreted the Waldstein-Veraguth opus in the same way as you; the news about the seat of consciousness left me shaken. But I am quite used to irresponsible statements by my followers. Not long ago one of my Wednesday people screwed up his courage and read a paper on the nature of the perversions;3 it sounded as if I had never said a word about them in the Three Essays, and friend Stekel backed him up. The essence of the perversions, he says, is unknown and will long remain so.4 I can see that those who proclaim errors do mankind a great service; they incite men to look for the truth, whereas those who tell the truth are the greatest malefactors of all, because they drive others into opposition to the truth. Originality can also be an aim in life.
I want to defend Brill's paper against your criticism.5 I thought it was pretty good; of course, I don't know how much of what you recommended to him he omitted. Penns-Parcival6 looks good to me. I have ventured to translate it from the paranoiac. Then it reads: Am