Letter from Ludwig Binswanger to Freud, October 19, 1936

19 October 1936

186B

Dear Professor Freud,

Many thanks for your kind letter in which, I think, you let me off rather lightly. The fact that my lecture left most of the audience unmoved is something I was aware of immediately and that did not surprise me. But then I did not write my lecture with a view to instant effect. Still, there was one face in front of me that followed my arguments with keen interest, that of Pötzl. As he told me afterwards, my references to Goethe in particular accorded with his own views of you. The reason Goethe cropped up so often in my lecture is, incidentally, not just objective, but also because I have never found it hard to place Goethe and yourself side by side and to think of you together. The reason is your incorruptible and undeviating independence of judgement in all spheres of life and in all situations, reflecting your very personality and destiny. This similarity occasionally makes itself felt even in your style.

Häberlin has written to me that he hopes that his life's work might one day receive a similar tribute, one that could only have sprung from personal affection.1 I merely report this to show that others, too, felt