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60A
Berlin
13 January 1909
Dear Professor,
You will by now have received my brief note of yesterday, which will surely have convinced you that I am in no way offended. Your last letter reached me just before Christmas. I then went to visit my parents for a few days, and on my return to Berlin I had to go straight to bed. The influenza epidemic did not spare me. Your card,1 with Stein's and Ferenczi's greetings, reached me in bed. Once I was up, there followed, for the first time in my practice, a somewhat overwhelming influx of patients, and I also had to write some psychiatric court reports in a hurry. In short, I did not find the desired leisure to reply to your letter which had given me particular pleasure in every way. It was perhaps wrong of me not to send you at least a few lines as an interim reply, but I hoped from day to day that I should at last be able to get down to answering it properly. And now, dear Professor, once and for all my assurance: I shall never take offence at your criticism of me. Nor do I think there is anything for which you have to make amends. I am, after all, aware of your personal interest in every one of your letters. The most recent one demonstrates it yet again. I would therefore have no reason to sulk and, in any case, it is not my way to react like that. The whole matter does, however, offer one comfort: I am not the only one who occasionally goes wrong in interpreting motives.
I should have been so glad to accept your invitation to come to Vienna at the same time as our colleagues from Budapest. The card from the Café Riedl2 awakened many memories. I think it will be possible to meet soon. I assume from your remarks that you will shortly be visiting Berlin, and after that it will be time for our spring meeting in Salzburg or elsewhere. It will presumably take place?
You are, of course, free to tell Brill and Jones about the letter from Morton Prince. Where is Jones, incidentally? I heard that he had emigrated to Canada.3
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