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Hotel Milan-Bahnhof,
Lugano,1 1 April 1912
Dear Professor Freud,
At last I have got away from Zürich so as to be alone with myself for a few days before going to Florence with my wife. As you see I am in Lugano, where it is raining miserably. Nevertheless, I am on my own here and unknown, and that is the acme of pleasure.
I hear that Bleuler's plans for the manuscript are not as murderous as I conjectured in my last letter. Even so, strange things must be going on at Burghölzli. There is talk of Bleuler's retirement. They say he wants to seclude himself in his father's place in Zollikon. (All this is only hearsay, of course.)
I was working on Spielrein's paper just before my departure. One must say: desinat in piscem mulíer formosa superne.2 After a very promising start the continuation and end trail off dismally. Particularly the “Life and Death in Mythology” chapter needed extensive cutting as it contained gross errors and, worse still, faulty, one-sided interpretations. She has read too little and has fallen flat in this paper because it is not thorough enough. One must say by way of excuse that she has brought her problem to bear on an aspect of mythology that bristles with riddles. Besides that her paper is heavily overweighted with her own complexes. My criticism should be administered to the little authoress in refracta dosi only, please, if at all. I shall be writing to her myself before long.
Frau Lou's manuscript will be sent to you only after your holiday. There are “tremendous” things in it.
I am eager to see Imago. I cannot, however, quite suppress the fear that it will drain valuable forces away from the Jahrbuch. We have in Zürich too scanty a stock of young blood. Perhaps I am being over-pessimistic because the mass of case material now piling up in the