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Grand Hotel Victoria and National,
Basel,1 30 April 1910
Dear Professor Freud,
At last I can report to you after the uproar last week. In a private talk beforehand, Bleuler, very huffy and irritable, gave me a flat refusal and expressly declared that he would not join the Society—he would dissociate himself from it altogether. Reasons: its aim was too
biased, it took too narrow a view of the problems, it was too exclusive, you had slighted Frank in Nuremberg and thereby ostracized him, one didn't want to sit down with everybody (a dig at Stekel). He simply would not join, that was the long and short of it. I told him what the consequences would be, but it was no good. Yesterday we had our constituent assembly, which Frank also attended. The same opposition was shown with the same hollow resistances; another “reason” they gave was that they didn't want to commit themselves to a confession of faith, etc. In the course of the discussion it became clear that Frank is the grey eminence who has been working on Bleuler. I let the discussion go on until both Bleuler and Frank were properly cornered and were forced to admit that they just didn't want to join. I had so arranged matters that the local group had already constituted itself with 12 members before the meeting took place, which faced them with a fait accompli. The overwhelming majority are on our side. Taking your Nuremberg tactics as a model, I postponed the final decision until the next meeting in the hope that Bleuler's resistances will have melted by then. As the evening wore on he became noticeably milder and I almost venture to hope he will come along with us. In any case Frank can go by the board and I would gladly speed his departure with a joyful kick, […]. We shall manage with or without Bleuler, but with him would be better. Most of the others stuck by me splendidly and did their best to unhorse Bleuler. After the meeting he again favoured us privatim with a dream, naturally in order to dispute the i