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354A
Berlin-Grünewald
5 May 1919
Dear Professor,
This letter was meant to reach you on 7 May,1 but it will arrive some days later after all. My good wishes are nonetheless sincere! I had hoped to be able to send you a scientific contribution in honour of the day, as I have done several times previously. The paper in question will, however, be more extensive than I had anticipated and, because of my limited leisure, will not be ready for some weeks. It uses your recent publication on the taboo of virginity as a point of departure and deals with the castration complex in women; I think it contributes something new. Some days ago I spoke in our Society about this topic.2 We have had regular meetings since the end of the war, and they are far more productive than they used to be. I now have our colleague S.[immel] under treatment! His resistances are not, as you thought, of the Breuer type, at least not principally so, but mainly narcissistic. As long as he was alone and could feel himself a discoverer, it was all right; but he cannot bear to be a part of the organization in which he is not the first. His resistances to treatment are enormous, and I do not know whether I shall master them.
For myself, I can report that my health is now fairly satisfactory. The practice is lively and will become more lucrative in due course. I have the impression from my analyses that I have made progress in technique in spite of the long interval. My handling of neuroses and psychoses at the military hospital was certainly less intensive in each single case but gave me much insight and extended my experience.—You may be interested to hear that I have recently begun the analysis of a case of paranoia querulans—most instructive and fully confirming your views.
Eitingon will write to you very soon. He was in Leipzig for quite a time, as his brother died.3 Earlier he reviewed your work on the infantile neurosis4 for us on one evening. At the penultimate session Frau Dr Horney made an excellent an