You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
12 February 1911
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
50F
Prof Dr. Freud
Dear Dr. Binswanger,
I can now read your handwriting very easily! Please do not be cross with me for replying so tardily. I really do have to wait for Sundays and those too sometimes have to be given up.
I am sure you have acted correctly in the Str[ohmayer] affair by maintaining your independence even towards your uncle. Str[ohmayer], incidentally, did not strike me as being a man who is entirely frank or entirely steadfast.1 Carry on doing your own work and don't let it slip out of your hands.
However, your need is for qualified collaborators now, or else you will quickly wear yourself out with psychoanalysis. A terrible pity about Maeder.2 Do keep looking for someone else. Ever since Muthmann3 deserted us so timorously4 - although he is said to have remained true to himself in his medical practice - our people in Germany only have your clinic to call on, and you cannot possibly analyse everyone who comes to you for analysis. The shortened treatment that will recommend itself to you as suitable for an institution presupposes that one has first acquired, through thorough analyses, a conclusive knowledge of what may happen. With that, it will be possible to shape what you aim for into a more convenient therapeutic set of tools.5
My state of health has truly stabilised since the gas-tube business. Work and interest are at a peak. My son is back home in plaster and is learning to get about again.
So Frau G. has by lucky chance forgotten something. I think it is the following: after her divorce she had an affair with an older gentleman, a friend of the family and a father substitute, and was made pregnant by him when she was already engaged to her present husband. It was this child she got rid of in a far from innocent fashion and that now cripples her in her attitude towards her - highly dubious - husband. I should tackle her about this man in the middle. She once spoke to me of him in even greater detail.
Putnam write