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27 April 1911, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear friend
I am awaiting your report on Stuttgart, but I shall write to you today so as not to leave you for too long without news. My chief tormentor—la C—— —is off on a holiday and I am feeling delightfully lazy.
I have already returned Silberer to you. I haven't had much luck with Bleuler myself; it's like embracing a piece of linoleum. But we must bear it. With his usual caricature of politeness he has sent me his
critique of Stekel for the Münchener1 to “improve on,” and at my request he has written a very commendable reply to Oppenheim that will be published in the Zentralblatt (No. 9).2 In my answer I took Silberer under my protection. To return the compliment I sent him my review3 of Stekel's book for the Jahrbuch and asked him to keep it until you ask him for it. But he has sent it back, which gives me a chance to tone it down a little! Because in the meantime Stekel has moved close to us again, and I should like to treat him more gently. First because all in all he is a good-natured fellow and devoted to me, secondly because I am bound to put up with him as one does with an elderly cook who has been with the family for years, and thirdly and mainly because we have no way of knowing what he may discover and misrepresent if we rebuff him. He is absolutely incorrigible, an offense to all good taste, a true child of the ucs., a “strange son of chaos,”4 but what he says about the ucs., with which he is on much better terms than we are, is usually right. Yesterday we had a discussion about his book. I read the review in question aloud; he reacted as if he didn't feel spat upon but had only felt a few drops of rain. So it passed off quite well. As an editor he is conscientious and self-sacrificing, which makes him irreplaceable.
With Adler it is different; his behaviour is simply puerile. I should like to throw him out on the next occasion; but Stekel wants to keep him and promises to make him see the light.
Yesterday li