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381F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
4 July 1920
Dear Friend,
We have now known each other for about 13 years and have always got on excellently. It will be the same this time, but for this purpose you must give in and admit that what you are asking is no small thing. When you come to be 64 years old and have behind you ten months of a working year such as this one has been, the claim to an undisturbed break will no longer seem to you an unwarranted act of stubbornness, and the possible effect on Berlin medical circles will seem rather like a matter of indifference in comparison. So leave me out; I shall speak in Berlin neither before nor after the Congress. You need not alter your programme because of that. My rest will be by no means complete in any case. In August I have a difficult subject to write on, which will require full concentration, and in September there is the Congress, which leads back to analysis again. But more than that is impossible.
You say your event is pointless unless I co-operate. That is precisely the attitude that I want to work against. Only try, and you will see that it will work out fine. Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you will have to make do without me in any case, so you had better begin today.
Your summons to Halle seems to me to be very gratifying. In Germany and England there is indeed plenty going on. Even with us interest in Ψα is growing, probably through the influence of the foreigners. The Society is at present applying to obtain a Ψα department in an extension of the general hospital. Getting it would be quite unwelcome for me, because it would have to be in my name; I cannot devote any time to it, and there is no one in the Society to whom I could entrust its management.1
Yesterday Stekel wrote me a funny, cheekily silly, affectionate letter to woo for a renewal of our relationship. That is to do with the new journal Eros and Psyche, which he is bringing out with Tannenbaum2 and Silberer.3 Naturally I am not replying. Frau Hug is very