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30 March 1936
180B
Dear Professor Freud,
The Academic Society for Medical Psychology in Vienna has asked me to deliver an address on 7 May in honour of your eightieth birthday.1 I have accepted with great pleasure; I regard being permitted to speak and pay tribute to you in your native city on so festive an occasion as a high point in our old friendship. I read through our whole correspondence once again a short while ago and was reminded how much suffering and joy - it was more suffering than joy - we have shared. You stood by me, in any case, during the three most distressing events of my life - my illness, and the deaths of my two sons - more staunchly and warmly than all but a few of my friends. These are things one can never hope to repay in one's lifetime.
The reason for this letter is now, however, a very special one. I wish to ask your permission to quote, in my address in Vienna and in an essay2 I am writing about you for a journal, a few recollections of my conversations with you, or one or two verbatim passages from a letter of yours. At first I did not want to bother you at all with such a request, since I anticipate your agreement. However, you yourself are so meticulous and correct when you quote others that I felt it was best to ask you beforehand. No reply means that you agree.