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6F
Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
8 October 1907
Dear Colleague,
I soon suppressed the first impulse of regret I felt on reading your letter. No harm can come to a youthful man like you from being forced into open life “au grand air”, and that as a Jew you will encounter more difficulties will have the effect, as it has with all of us, of bringing out all your productive capabilities. That my sympathy and best wishes are with you on your new path goes without saying; and more than that, whenever possible. If my intimate friendship with Dr W. Fliess1 from Berlin still existed, the way would be levelled for you; but now unfortunately that road is completely blocked. During the past year I have repeatedly been in the position of having to tell patients from Germany I was sorry I knew no confidant in the Reich to whom I could recommend them. If such cases recur this year, however, I shall know what to do. If my reputation in Germany increases, it will certainly be advantageous for you, and if I may forthrightly refer to you as my pupil and follower—you do not seem to me to be a man to be ashamed of that—I shall be able to back you energetically. On the other hand, you yourself know the hostility with which I still have to struggle in Germany. I hope you will make no attempt whatever to win the favour of your new colleagues, who first of all are like those everywhere else, and then a whole lot more brutal on top of it, but will instead turn directly to the public. At the time when the fight against hypnosis was at its most violent in Berlin, a very disagreeable hypnotist named Grossmann quickly built himself up a big practice on the basis of that therapy. So one should rather expect that with the aid of psychoanalysis you should do even better.
You indicate that there is still something you would like to submit to me, and I hope you know that I am at your disposal to the best of my ability. Does not the journey from Zurich to Berlin conveniently take in Vienna?
I shall