Letter from Ludwig Binswanger to Freud, June 15, 1911

15 June 1911

57B

Dear Professor Freud,

Your last letter gave me great pleasure. As I wrote to you once before, I cannot picture you as an ageing man. I imagine this is because my father, who as you know lived into his sixties, never struck me as being an ageing man. I can see him now, with all his undiminished mental vigour and enterprising spirit. In short, I have the feeling that a man is not yet old at 60, let alone at 55.

I thought of you today while analysing a patient's dream. She had dreamt that I had moved away and was devoting all my time to analysis (mainly, of course, to hers) in a foreign city. Material: I was much more suited to being an analyst than to being the director of a clinic; I must be much more interested in the first occupation for it is so much more demanding. ‘How can anyone allow his energies to be so dissipated, and turn the main matter into a side issue? What a waste! How can you devote yourself to anything else when you could be doing something so important, when you belong to this new movement, a great cause for which you have such a special talent?’ - You said something like that to me once, too, and, like the patient,