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499A
Berlin-Grünewald
27 October 1925
Dear Professor,
Our last correspondence referring to the publication of my short paper (The Impostor) was overtaken by events. I received the proofs for correction some days ago, so that in any case nothing could be done about its publication in . It seems it was needed to fill a gap there. I am now writing an essay of similar length—“Psycho-Analytical Notes on Coué's System of Self-Mastery”1—which leans on your group psychology. Radó wants to include it in Number 1 of 1926, and I shall therefore appear in that issue in a different way.
You know, dear Professor, that I am very unwilling to enter once again into a discussion of the Bernfeld and Storfer affair. But because of your reproach of harshness (in your circular letter), I find myself in the same position again as on several previous occasions. In almost 20 years, we have had no differences of opinion except where personalities were concerned whom I, very much to my regret, had to criticize. The same sequence of events repeated itself each time; you indulgently overlooked everything that could be challenged in the behaviour of the persons concerned, while all the blame—which you subsequently recognized as unjustified—was directed against me. In Jung's case your criticism was that of “jealousy”; in the case of Rank “unfriendly behaviour”, and this time “harshness”. Could the sequence of events not be the same once again? I advanced an opinion that is basically yours as well, but which you did not admit into consciousness. All the unpleasure linked to the relevant facts is then turned against the person who has drawn attention to them.
What has actually happened—I mean on the part of Sachs and myself—that could leave you with so unpleasant an “after-taste”? Neither of us ever thought to plan a Ψα film and to seek a company to make it. We were approached by “Neumann Productions” to work with them because they wanted competent analysts. If we had refused, all the “wild” analyst