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Vienna, Hohe Warte1
June 2, 1932
Dear Stefan Zweig
Whenever a work of mine is published I feel reluctant for a long time to give it any further thought. I should be sorry if this were true for you too, for I intend to draw your attention back to that book2 of yours, a third of which you devoted to me and my work.
A friend of mine who has recently been in Venice found in a bookshop there the Italian translation of Mental Healers, and made me a present of it. As a result I reread parts of your essay and discovered on page 272 an error of representation which cannot be looked upon as unimportant and which, if you don't mind my saying so, actually belittles my merit. It declares that Breuer's patient under hypnosis made the confession of having experienced and suppressed certain “sentimenti illeciti” (i.e., of a sexual nature) while sitting at her father's sickbed. In reality she said nothing of the kind; rather she indicated that she was trying to conceal from her father her agitated condition, above all her tender concern. If things had been as your text maintains, then everything else