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Burghölzli-Zürich, 3 December 1908
Dear Professor Freud,
Heartiest thanks for your congratulatory telegram!1 You can imagine our joy. The birth went off normally, mother and child2 are doing well. Too bad we aren't peasants any more, otherwise I could say: Now that I have a son I can depart in peace. A great deal more could be said on this complex-theme.
As for Brill, my opposition does not mean that I consider Penns.-Parsifal impossible. In theory I agree with it, but in practice I think it inopportune to present such—for the layman—inconclusive parallels in a beginner's work. For this reason I advised Brill not to include it. What he omitted was important. The day before the outbreak of delirium the patient visited the wife of a good friend of his, a man who had been in an asylum for quite a long time. (It seems that the wife was not altogether indifferent!) While with her he read a letter which she had recently received from his friend and which made a