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52A
Berlin
10 November 1908
Dear Professor,
I have postponed my reply longer than usual because I wanted to tell you without delay what happened yesterday evening. I spoke to the Berliner Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten on “Intermarriage between Relatives and Neurosis”.1 To sum up first of all: the evening was quite successful on the whole. The subject proved suitable for this first attack because I did not have to touch on certain points that would be most likely to raise people's temperatures. I chose a few remarks of Oppenheim's as a starting point and stressed the correspondence between his and your views concerning certain observations on neurotic children. I avoided mentioning several important points (for instance, the connection with homosexuality) because these would have aroused unnecessary opposition, but stood very firm on all my references to sexual theory. I think you will also agree that I did not mention your name too often. It acts like a red rag to a bull, and people knew what I was aiming at in any case. The audience remained attentive to the end, and, in spite of the late hour, a discussion followed. First Oppenheim: very appreciative in several respects. He would be quite convinced on some new points. It was only against the Freudian view of infantile sexuality that he could not but take a “most brusque and resolute stand”. Then Ziehen.2 While O. had on the whole remained factual, Ziehen rode his academic high horse. “Wild assumptions”, “What Freud has written is all nonsense”, and so forth.—Then two speakers (Schuster, Rothmann), who made factual contributions. And now the star turn: a very pushy colleague, Braatz,3 whose conversion to Christianity has proved only partially successful, assumed a moralizing tone that would have been more suited to a public platform. I had, inter alia, mentioned Konrad Ferdinand Meyer (as had Sadger) as an example of love for the mother.4 That would be outrageous; the German ideals would be at stak