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336F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
22 March 1918
Dear Friend,
There is no need to explain the slip of the pen on the envelope!1 As the great offensive has now begun,2 I assume your spirits will have been raised, if not by the hope of peace, at any rate by that of victory, and for that reason you will think my confession to being tired and weary of the struggle all the more irresponsible. As you see, I can hardly write legibly any more. Perhaps, as I have always been a carnivore, the unaccustomed diet contributes to my listlessness.
Two of my warriors have gone back, first of all to their former postings. The third, Ernst, because of his ailments, the worst of which is pulmonary catarrh, is in a position to be graded C or B and hopes for several months' leave so as to be able to go on with his studies in Munich. If travelling were not now forbidden and subject to all sorts of penalties, I should very much like to go to see my daughter and grandson at Easter, and Schwerin is not too far from Allenstein. But it cannot be done.
If you were free now, a vast field of work would be open to you as the natural intermediary with German neurology. Today—following in the wake of Simmel—I received a monograph from Lewandowsky's collection3 (Vol. 15), called Delusion and Realization by Paul Schilder (Leipzig),4 which is quite analytic in its conclusions, though it dutifully ignores the Oedipus complex. Sch. naturally writes as if these gentlemen had discovered everything, or most of it, by themselves. That, in short, is the way our findings will be “adopted” by German medicine. Not that it matters.
I recently sent you the proofs of the last issue5 of the , both because of my metapsychological efforts6 and because of the—not exactly distinguished—reaction of Tausk to your paper on ejaculatio præcox.7 We are continuing to print the journals, but Heller is ill and inaccessible, so that we are uncertain about the future. I wanted to persuade him to publish a fourth volume of my Sammlun