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Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
December 30, 1925
Dear Jones
I can only repeat what you have said: Abraham's death is perhaps the greatest loss that could have struck us-and it has struck us! In my letters I used to call him jestingly my “rocher de bronze”; I felt safe in the absolute confidence he inspired in me, as in everyone else. In the brief obituary1 which I wrote for the Zeitschrift (Issue I, 1926)-a detailed appreciation of him will probably come from another side; Issue 2 is being reserved for it- I applied to him Horace's line: “Integer vitae scelerisque purus.”2
I have always found exaggerations on the occasion of death particularly distasteful and I have been careful to avoid them, but in citing this quotation I feel I have been sincere.
Who would have thought when we met that time in the Harz mountains3 that he would be the first to leave this unreasonable life!-We must continue to work and stand together. As a human being no one can replace this loss, but for psychoanalysis no one is allowed to be irreplaceable. I shall soon drop out, the others not till much later, I hope, but our work, compared to whose importance we are all insignificant, must continue.
I am certainly in favor of Eitingon as president; we have owed him this honor for a long time, but he doesn't intend to return till March; his ailing wife makes too many claims on him. What is the