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28F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
3 May 1908
My dear and esteemed Colleague,
I am very glad that you regard Salzburg as a gratifying event. I am in no position to judge, since I stand in the midst of it all, but my inclination is also to consider this first gathering a promising try.
I can answer your question straight away: the Congress is not to be publicly mentioned at all. Thus also not under the title of your forthcoming publication.
In connection with the latter, I would make a request to you, on the fulfilment of which all sorts of things may depend. I recollect that your paper led to a slight conflict between you and Jung, or so at least I concluded from a few words you said to me afterwards. Now, I consider a rivalry between the two of you to be inevitable, and also quite harmless within certain limits; in dealing with the matter at issue I did not hesitate to say that you were in the right and to attribute Jung's sensitiveness to his vacillation. But I would not like any serious bad feeling to come between you. We are still so few that disharmony, especially because of any personal “complexes”, should be out of the question among us. It must also be of importance for us that Jung should find his way back to the views he has just forsaken, which you have stood by so consistently. I believe there are prospects for this; Jung also writes to me that Bleuler shows signs of being very much influenced and almost inclined to abandon again the concept of the organic nature of dementia præcox.
So you would virtually do me a personal favour if you informed him in advance of your publication and asked him to discuss his former objections with you so that you would be able to take them into account. Such an act of courtesy will certainly nip the nascent disagreement in the bud, would greatly please me, and would show me that all of us are capable of also drawing practical benefit for our own mental activities from the practice of psychoanalysis. Do not take the little victory over