Letter from Karl Abraham to Sigmund Freud, July 31, 1908

45A

Berlin
31 July 1908

Dear Professor,

I am very sorry that not only my work but also my personal affairs are taking up your time and efforts. But since the subject of Zurich has been broached, I must add something further to it. You think that I should have used more tact in the lecture formulation of my paper. I

myself believe that some things now look more pointed in print than they sounded when spoken. I did not have the intention to offend; true, however, that while writing it, my feelings towards Zurich were not very rosy. Shortly before going to Salzburg, I received Jung's Amsterdam paper1 and Bleuler's and Jung's reply to E. Meier2 and heard Bleuler's paper at the Congress here. These three performances did certainly astonish me. Now, I understood Jung's defeat in Amsterdam.3 In his talk, Bleuler avoided anything relating to psychoanalysis (and how much he could have said!), and, as for their joint publication, I found it really outrageous. The sub-division into primary and secondary symptoms as the only result of years of analysis of the mentally ill! And a hair-splitting about toxins, etc. Should they not instead have held out the prospect that the problem was soon to be approached on the basis of the theory of sexuality? Not a word about Freud or the theory of sexuality. But Meier! (He has a chair at Königsberg, and is known to both authors as a total dead loss.) On the journey to Salzburg, Eitingon told me of this change and also that Jung's paper on dementia præcox4 would contain nothing Freudian. I had long before informed Jung how I conceived my subject and that I had added some new points of view to those formerly discussed. One would have thought from his talk that he had never heard of auto-eroticism, etc. We talked at cross purposes. You yourself have put the reason for Jung's subsequent ill humour in the best possible way. There was universal surprise at the behaviour of the Zurichers. Everyone saw it as a turning away. Can one then say that I stol