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314F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
20 May 1917
Dear Friend,
After your last communication, with which I was supposed not to be in agreement (but why?), I had to wait a long time for your promised letter. Yesterday it arrived at last, dated the 4th inst.! My heartfelt thanks for your congratulations, though I hold that at this time of life no notice should be taken of such anniversaries, and I think with regret
how different your entry into a new decade would have been, had not this disaster overtaken us all.
I see with dismay that you deprecate yourself in relation to me, building me up in the process into a kind of imago instead of describing me objectively. In reality I have grown quite old and rather frail and tired, and have to some extent turned away from work. The Lectures were still written in the summer holidays, and since then I have done nothing, though some short papers are still being published. Life bears too heavily on me. I talk very little about this, because I know that the other would take such statements as complaints and signs of depression and not as objective descriptions, which would be unfair to me. I believe I have had my time, and I am no more depressed than usual, thus very little, and console myself with the assurance that my work lies in the good hands of continuers such as you and Ferenczi, and perhaps some others. You in particular have written in these unfavourable conditions the two best clinical studies that we possess and have certainly compiled ample new material.
I have here an almost complete new edition of the Lectures, but it will certainly take another 3-4 weeks before I am able to send you the book. Thanks to Sachs's really astonishing efforts, the two journals are continuing; the printing of the next issue of was held up by a sudden paper shortage. But it will be pushed through.
I do not expect to travel to Germany in the immediate future. The senseless restrictions make it quite impossible. My daughter left on the 14th inst. an