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Vienna, IX, Berggasse 19
April 28, 1918
Dear crazy young friend!
I assure you I understand you completely, to me you can write anything that comes into your head, and I am not so easily shocked. But don't you realize that you have shocked your patriarch so often that he no longer has any confidence in your perseverance, and is obliged to bother you with the command not to write to him so often? Why did you do that at the time? I know of course why, and even now you don't have to suppress such attempts at “extortion.”
The dear Lord has endowed you with one of his most precious gifts, a delicious, fantastic humor. So why not put it in harness and let it pull your cart through the filthy present till we come once more to a cleaner street? You are young and you know one has to make an effort. After all, whether you learn to take the bit between your teeth now or later in your life makes no difference.
To your friendly questions I answer that we are all still alive, although naturally not very gay. I am told there are enough cigars till 1919 (end or beginning?). Food, they say, will return each year with the harvest, in the distribution of which you have a hand. It is very kind of you to express yourself in such affectionate terms. I realize, of course, that they belong to the very father of whom you complain in the same letter. I hope that once you are an ensign the whole situation will become more tolerable. So bear up.
With cordial greetings
Your father substitute
Freud
The address on your letter must have been inspired by the language-purifying devil. In civilian life it is called “professor and physician.”