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June 9, 1899
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
A sign of life! The “silence of the forest”1 is the clamor of a metropolis compared to the silence in my consulting room. This is a good place to “dream.” The literature contains some specimens which for the first time make me wish that I had never had anything to do with it. One of them is named Spitta (to spit2 = to vomit). I am over the hill now. Naturally one gets ever deeper into it, and there comes a point when one has to break off. The whole matter again resolves itself for me into a commonplace. Invariably the dream seeks to fulfill one wish that has assumed various forms. It is the wish to sleep! We dream in order not to have to wake up, because we want to sleep. Tant de bruit …3
The children went to Berchtesgaden Tuesday evening. Kassowitz said nothing; only said that it was nothing. After eating, Ernstl complains, “It hurts”; and in the last days he could not be induced to eat because then “it hurts.” Martha and Mathilde will follow on June 20. Because I have been in England and Hamburg, I have seen a bit of the ocean, but not enough.
I have begun analyzing a friend (Mrs. A.), a first-rate woman — have I never mentioned her to you? — and once more am able to convince myself how splendidly everything fits. Otherwise I am resigned. I have enough to live on for another few months. I saw Oscar, Mela, and Oscar II just before your mother's departure. Strange that I cannot really get cross with the second Oscar either: he obviously resembles Ida too much. I am swamped with psychological literature — it has a depressing effect on me, giving me a feeling that I know nothing when I had thought I had grasped something new. That this activity of reading and abstracting cannot be endured for more than a few hours a day is another misfortune. So I