1923
416A
Berlin-Grünewald
7 January 1923
Dear Professor,
It is wonderful to be able to start the first letter of the New Year with congratulations. Today at midday my wife and I congratulated Oliver and his fiancée,1 and brief though our meeting was, we had a pleasant impression of her. I have known her father, Dr F.[uchs], for many years from the practice. We also send you and yours our best wishes. I should like to take the opportunity to remark that for quite a long time I have found Oliver distinctly changed for the better, more cheerful and much less restless.
I have to thank you, dear Professor, for your amusing lines about my picture. Naturally I cannot agree with you completely. The painter is without doubt very gifted. I had seen a number of sketches of portrait drawings in his studio, which were of such brilliant nature that I decided to ask him to sketch me. I did not know that these drawings dated from an earlier period and that he had in the meantime changed over to the most modern school. I am in no way inclined toward this abstract school. However, since the picture was finished, I did not wish to withhold it from our circle. If one looks at it often over a period of time, more and more characteristics become apparent. In order to make good the wrong I have done you, I intend to give myself over to another artist sometime soon. At the end of February, I am to read a paper in Hamburg2 and intend to consult an artist there of whom you too will approve.3
I am glad that the differences of opinion that had been expressed in the circular letters have been settled with the Old Year.4 Sachs told me about the discussions in Vienna5 and passed on to me your wish that the Berlin letters should be based on discussions between us three, so that they should give an extract of our combined views. You expressed exactly what I feel! But you cannot have any idea with what difficulties I have to struggle. You know yourself how careless Sachs has become in many things, and that Eitingon's domestic fixation cannot be broken through. I have asked both of them repeatedly to give me at least a marginal note on the letters coming in from outside. What I received was once a trivial note from E., and once from S. the request to inform the Comm. that he has recovered from the influenza! When we get together, then everything is talked through in detail, but that occurs too rarely, and so it happens that most of the time I have to do all the correspondence on my own. But I should like to believe that there has never been anything of primary importance in it that had not been approved by the others.
In the next few days I shall write to Rank more fully about the Kinder-sammlung [Collection about children].6 The day's work leaves little time for other matters. At present I am writing a short essay containing some contributions on the vicissitudes of the Oedipus complex.7 If possible, I shall enclose it in my letter to Rank. In that case, dear Professor, I should like to have your opinion, whether you agree with the conclusions. Reading this essay will not take up more than ten minutes of your time, and no special letter is necessary. A comment in the circular letter will be sufficient!—The subject I spoke on at the Congress is growing more and more into a longer work,8 which I intend to write in the next few months. Perhaps it can appear as a supplementary issue.
To my delight I heard yesterday from Storfer9 that suitable accommodation has been found for the Verlag; a good beginning, at least, in such difficult conditions!
Our polyclinic received from Fräulein van der Linden, who is here with Ophuijsen, a present of 100 guilders, now = 330,000 marks, which is useful even in present times. We shall have to expand somehow in the course of the year. The consulting-rooms are no longer sufficient, and it is the same with the courses in the old rooms.
There is good news about developments here. Yesterday a young doctor from Leipzig came to see me. He has taken a house appointment in Berlin so as to undergo an analysis in order to learn it. Such cases are becoming increasingly frequent.
With cordial greetings from house to house,
Yours,
Abraham
1. Henny Fuchs [1892–1971]; she and Oliver married in Berlin on 10 April 1923.
2. On 3 March Abraham gave a paper before the Oriental Seminar of the University of Hamburg (Abraham, 1923[84]).
3. That is, Freud's son-in-law, the photographer Max Halberstadt.
4. For months, there had been considerable personal tension between the members of the Committee, particularly between Jones (supported by Abraham) and Rank (supported by Ferenczi), who quarrelled over competencies of and relations between the Verlag in Vienna and the Press in London. Freud had intervened with a circular letter (26 November 1922, BL), in which he had stood up for Rank and interpreted Jones's and Abraham's behaviour as being governed by ambivalent feelings towards himself, directing their hostile side towards Rank.
5. Sachs had come to Vienna on 23 December 1922 (Abraham's circular letter, 16 December 1922, BL).
6. A project to publish a book on the subject in the Verlag, which did not materialize.
7. Abraham gave a talk on the subject before the Berlin Society on 29 March 1924 (Abraham, 1924[98]) but did not publish it.
8. Another reference to Abraham's work on his classic Study of the Development of the Libido (1917[105]).
9. See letter 98F, 18 December 1910, & n. 2.
417A
Berlin-Grünewald
21 February 1923
Dear Professor,
A relative in England has sent me the enclosed pictures of the Egyptian discoveries. They show the contents of the antechamber of the tomb. Later I hope to receive some of the actual burial chamber, which has been opened in the meantime.
May I ask you to send me back the pictures by registered post in about eight days? They do not belong to me, and I am supposed to send them back to London in good time.
With cordial greetings from house to house,
Yours,
Abraham
Addendum1
New Discoveries in Egypt
As reported from Cairo, the English researchers succeeded on 16 February in opening the burial chamber of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. We reported in detail the earlier discoveries, which caused an immense sensation in the scientific world. The new discoveries appear, according to the reports to hand, of even greater historical importance. Besides artistic and historical objects in fairy-tale abundance, the gigantic sarcophagus, “covered over and over with gold”, was brought out into the light of day. It has not yet been possible to open the sarcophagus, which has now lain in the earth for about 3,000 years. It is thought that great treasures of papyrus are contained in the shrines that stand around the chamber. A second chamber contains another golden shrine, and beside it a statue of Anubis, a huge bull's head, black boxes of all sizes, small cabinets, the golden portrait of the king, a series of ivory and ebony caskets and a state carriage. After these discoveries, the report speaks of 16 February as a “day of the greatest importance in the history of Egyptian archaeology”.
1 A newspaper cutting glued to the letter.
418F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
4 March 1923
Dear Friend,
I return the newspaper cuttings with thanks. Some of them I had received already from another side. Chief feeling—annoyance at not being able to be there, and above all of descending to the Styx1 without having sailed on the Nile.
It now seems indubitable that they will soon find the mummy of the king and perhaps also that of his consort, a daughter of our analytic Pharaoh.2 According to a rumour spread by the Swiss here, Jung's Mrs McCormick3 has announced that she knows she was this queen. Personally I hope Tutankhamen had better taste. A mad hussy [verrücktes Luder]!
In Vienna things are pretty quiet, as Berlin has taken the wind out of our sails. Also the times are too wretched. A charming letter from Romain Rolland4 arrived here recently like a breath of spring; he mentions in passing that he was already interested in analysis 20 years ago.
I hope that things are well with you and your wife and children and send my regards to you as well as the Ophuijsens.
Cordially yours,
Freud
1. In Greek mythology, the river of the underworld.
2. Referring to Abraham, 1912[34].
3. Edith Rockefeller McCormick [1872–1932], a patient of Jung's, married to Harold Fowler McCormick [1872–1941], Chicago industrialist. Both were liberal benefactors of analytical psychology. (Cf. McGuire, 1995.)
4. Romain Rolland [1866–1944], the noted French writer, biographer, musicologist, and dramaturge. Nobel Prize for literature in 1915. He and Freud subsequently had friendly relations. (See Freud's reply, 1960a: pp. 341–342; Freud's discussion of Rolland's “oceanic feeling”, 1930a; Vermorel & Vermorel, 1993.)
419A
Berlin-Grünewald
1 April 1923
Dear Professor,
The Berlin circular letter has just been sent off but, as it is no substitute for personal contact with you, I am using the free time of the Easter days to send you a direct sign of life once again. I have received the newspaper cuttings about Egypt and your letter. I will not have it that a trip to Egypt is quite out of the question for you. It would naturally be expensive and time-consuming, but if you cut your summer holiday by a month, you could surely be absent for a few months at the beginning of next year and enjoy Egypt. I do not consider it right that you should simply resign yourself. I had an uncle who, at the age of 75, celebrated his golden wedding by travelling to Egypt with his wife, and he even took camel rides in the desert. And you say you cannot take a boat up the Nile!
The subject of travel brings me to summer. Some time ago, dear Professor, you suggested that we six should meet without you. At that time I made the complementary suggestion that a meeting with you should follow it. If a meeting is to take place in one way or another, it would be a good thing to decide the approximate time now. I should therefore like to ask you to make a suggestion in the next circular letter. I feel that a meeting this year is urgently needed, for I see from all kinds of signs that there is still tension between Jones and Rank, and it should be removed as soon as possible!
A further question concerns your plans for the summer. Mine are strongly determined by the invitation to Oxford.1 But afterwards (in August) I should perhaps like to go somewhere not too far from where you are based, so that we could meet. I should be grateful if you could give me a hint sometime.
In the circular letter I mentioned my recent talk on the history of the development of object-love.2 It has brought me an unusual amount of appreciation from our circle, and I myself feel that it is an important addition to the theory of sexuality and, at the same time, my best work up to now. I shall try to write it up soon. At the same time I feel that this whole idea accords with your own views and will also meet with your approval. Apart from the main result (enlightenment of the developmental process from narcissism towards object-love), the paper makes a not unimportant contribution to the understanding of paranoia and other forms of neurosis, such as pseudologia, etc., which have so far not been exhausted. If travelling were not so very difficult, I would come to Vienna in the near future in order to hear your views.
I hope you and your family are well. I can give a good account of us as well. Our children are staying in various places with friends over Easter, so that my wife and I are spending the holiday alone for the first time.
With cordial greetings from both of us to you, dear Professor, and your family,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. The Seventh International Congress of Psychology, Oxford, 25 July to 1 August 1923, where Abraham gave a paper (1923[93]; see Jones's Congress report in the Zeitschrift, 1923, 9: 540). Among the speakers were also Alfred Adler, Morton Prince, and Pierre Janet.
2. Abraham, 1923[87], read at the meeting of 27 March (Zeitschrift, 1923, 9: 242; in Abraham, 1917[105]).
420F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
8 April1 1923
Dear Friend,
Every letter of yours bears the mark of the lively and successful Berlin constellation and moreover of your own optimism. May you retain it. Only yesterday my wife went to Berlin with Martin for the wedding,2 and I can hope that she will also see you and your wife.
It is strange how much you still overrate me, both materially and physically! Though I am still eight years short of your uncle's age at the time of his ride in the desert, I cannot imitate, but only envy him. I am neither rich nor well enough. You will gradually have to get used to the idea of my mortality and frailty.
I shall be glad to tell you what I know about the summer.3 Little is certain, Minna and I should be in Gastein in July—if the condition of her heart does not prevent it. This is the only definite point, apart from that there are only tendencies. We should prefer to spend August together in the Dolomites: Prags? Madonna di Campiglio? But then little Ernst from Hamburg cannot come with us there. Therefore my wife thinks of going with Anna and him to Lake Ossiach4 in July, where we came to know Annenheim before the war as a really satisfying place to stay, with, unfortunately, very bad accommodation. If it is better there this time, I shall perhaps go there during August as well. September is less difficult. Then my wife and sister-in-law feel most comfortable in Reichenhall; Anna is urging for Rome, and I too am thinking that ten terrible years have passed since I was last there.
These are the dates: Now can you do anything with them? We can always discuss them further.
You are right that the former situation in the Committee has not been established, but Jones has behaved too badly, which you could not possibly know in detail.
I am very glad to note that my paladins, you, Ferenczi, and Rank, always tackle fundamentals in your writings instead of playing around with foothill decorations of any kind. That is the case now with your object-love. I am very curious to read it, but cannot tell how far you have got with it.
With the most cordial greetings to you and your wife and children,
Yours,
Freud
P.S.: I am very interested in what is now developing with Oph.
1. In the handwriting: “March”, but evidently a mistake of Freud's for “April”. Clearly this letter is a reply to Abraham's of 1 April, the date of which is confirmed by the mention of Easter and of the Berlin Rundbrief of the same date (BL).
2. See letter 416A, 7 January 1923, n. 1.
3. Only shortly afterwards, at the end of April, Freud underwent the first operation on his jaw. The excised growth was found to be cancerous, but Freud was not told this. On 19 June his beloved grandchild Heinerle died. On 30 June he and Minna went to Gastein, while Martha, Anna, and Ernst were on Lake Ossiach. Freud joined them on 30 July, and then the whole family (except Minna, who stayed on in Gastein) spent the month of August in Lavarone in the South Tyrol. Knowing that there would be another major operation on his return to Vienna, he and Anna went to Rome [31 August to 21 September].
4. In Carinthia, in today's southern Austria.
421A
Berlin-Grünewald
3 May 1923
Dear Professor,
I am combining my reply to your letter with my most cordial wishes for your new year of life. But please do not be angry if straightaway I draw your attention to a contradiction in your letter! You express the hope that I will retain my optimism, and you advise me in the next sentence to get accustomed to the idea that your vitality is limited. How am I to manage these two things at once? Well, since for both at the same time are impossible, I shall choose the former, and without further ado I take my standpoint on the omnipotence of wishes and express my conviction that the new year will give you all possible brightness and health compatible with your years. If you are a psychoanalyst (as Stekel would say), you will have to permit me to point out the over-determination of my conviction. I am just reading your book.1 I still have to thank you for sending it to me. I think it shows evidence of such an unchanged sprightliness that can only delight all of us who are attached to you. The second reason stems from myself, since, as in many previous years, my own birthday is the day when I write to you to congratulate you on yours. Thus, I fill this letter with the maximum amount of confidence and only ask you to introject it for suitable use!
We too are thinking of the Southern Tyrol for August and particularly of the Gröden valley (St Ulrich or Wolkenstein). I am curious what our meeting at the end of August will be like.
I have still had no news of Ophuijsen since he went away a month ago. Sachs will be able to tell you more exactly at Whitsuntide about what has gone on. I myself am indeed grateful to Oph., as Ψα with him has really helped my daughter immensely.
Only good news today from here. Our courses have started and are very well attended. Our young members and the guests of our circle are extremely keen; among them, Lampl is coming along very well too! My analysand from Vienna (Frau Dr D.[eutsch]2) presents no easy task, but I expect good results. The same is true of Radó, who has some excellent characteristics that only need to be released from the neurotic accessories. Neither analysis is easy, but it is a question not only of getting rid of two neuroses, but of freeing, for our cause's sake, two unusual talents from their inhibitions. I hope it will work out.
It is not possible for me to write about recent scientific results today. I am now formulating the manic depressives (my Congress paper) and might wish to publish this, possibly together with the history of the development of object-love, as a supplement of the Zeitschrift. I should like to put the basic ideas about the latter subject before our small circle in August.—In Oxford I shall probably speak about something on the psychology of early childhood.
To conclude for today, dear Professor—my thanks for all your kind and appreciative words in your last letter!
E tanti buoni auguri3—for a new year of life that will bring you, your family, and all of us—the growing analytic family—the best with you, not forgetting another draught for you from the Fontana di Trevi!4
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Freud, 1923b, which had appeared at the end of April (Rank's circular letter, 1 May 1923, BL).
2. Helene Deutsch, née Rosenbach [1884–1982], M.D., the well-known psychoanalyst. She was one of the first women to study medicine in Vienna. From 1912 to 1918 she worked at Wagner-Jauregg's clinic, directing the women's ward during the war. Analysis with Freud, member of the Vienna Society [1918]. After her analysis with Abraham and her stay in Berlin [1923], she returned to Vienna, where she organized and directed the Teaching Institute [1925] and the Technical Seminar [1932]. In 1935 she emigrated to Boston, working in private practice and as a training analyst at the Institute there. She is especially known for her works on female psychology. (Cf. Roazen, 1985, 1991, 1992.)
3. Italian: “and many cordial wishes”.
4. Fountain in Rome. The traveller who throws a coin into it will, according to tradition, return.
422F
Vienna1
10 May 1923
Dear Friend,
I must shamefacedly ask you to accept this wretched card in payment for your long, warm letter. Because of the visits and celebrations of the last week I am behind with the fulfilment of all my duties. I can again chew, work, and smoke, and I shall try your optimistic formula: many happy returns of the day and none of the new growth!2
Cordially yours,
Freud3
1. Postcard.
2. Italicized words in English in original.
3. In August, while Freud spent his holidays in Lavarone, the members of the Committee met, without him, in the nearby San Cristoforo. The meeting was marked by a heated controversy between Rank and Jones. Rank was infuriated by an allegedly anti-Semitic remark Jones had made about him to Brill and demanded Jones's expulsion from the Committee, while Abraham defended Jones. The Committee was not dissolved for the moment but would collapse shortly afterwards. (Cf. Freud & Jones, 1993: p. 527; Gay, 1988: p. 424; Grosskurth, 1991: p. 134; Lieberman, 1985: pp. 188–191.)
423A
Berlin-Grünewald
7 October 1923
Dear Professor,
During the last few weeks I have been in continuous and lively contact with you in my thoughts, which were certainly charged with affect though not expressed in a letter. I knew you would not interpret my reserve in any other way than it was intended. After having heard, however, about your own attitude to the illness and operation, I cannot hold out any longer and am therefore writing to you. But I promise beforehand that this letter will not say anything further about your condition and will not even contain any good wishes apart from those that you read between the lines.—
I think there is only one thing I can do for the time being to give you pleasure. That is to let you have good reports about our position in Berlin. And, always providing that very bad political conditions do not paralyse our work, I hope to be able to carry out my intentions. Some days ago I reported in the circular letter on our first two meetings. Since then more good news is to be noted. In the next few days we are starting our lending library, which will have to give our younger members access to ψα literature. Apart from the courses already announced, a further one will be arranged—by Frau Dr Klein1—for kindergarten teachers on the sexuality of the child.
I have something pleasant to report in the scientific field. In my work on melancholia etc., of which Rank has the manuscript, I have assumed the presence of a basic irritation2 in infancy as a prototype for later melancholia. In the last few months Frau Dr Klein has skilfully conducted the Ψα of a three-year-old boy with good therapeutic results. This child faithfully presented the basic melancholia that I had assumed and in close combination with oral erotism. The case offers in general amazing insight into the infantile instinctual life.
I am pleased to see that my assumptions about the two stages in the anal-sadistic phase are confirmed by new material. I had a remarkable experience with one of my melancholics, who is still in treatment with me. On my return from the journey, I found him at the beginning of a new depression triggered by a disappointment connected with his fiancée. The depression had not set in with the same intensity as on previous occasions, but the rejection of the love-object was visible in its characteristic form. Quick intervention resulted in the melancholia changing within a fortnight, and more clearly on each subsequent day, into an obsessional neurosis with the main symptom of the fear the main obsessional idea of having to strangle the mother (fiancée). In contrast to previous times, no cannibalistic-oral sadism, but manual sadism. The patient has already resumed working, and my impression is that it has been possible to divert a melancholia in statu nascendi into a relatively more favourable form of illness.
May I go on gossiping a little more about my work? What I said in Lavarone about the stages of object-love, and particularly about partial incorporation, is being very nicely confirmed at present. I had assumed that in paranoid and related psychoses regression to this phase could be demonstrated. The analysis of a psychosis that Loofs presented at our first meeting3 supplied excellent confirmatory material. Among other things, the patient had the delusional idea that a monkey was sitting inside her. This monkey could be shown with absolute clarity to be the father's penis.
This shall be enough for today. But I would just like to add a word about the general impression made by our first two meetings. The keenness of the slowly growing circle has increased, and I feel as never before that I am keeping our members firmly together. Registrations of papers for the Congress are already coming in to the extent that one will have to try to subdue them.
Now only one more remark, and that is that I naturally do not expect any reply. I do have my own sources, from which I get the news I want. Perhaps I shall come myself in November or December to see that things are going well. I conclude in haste in order not to break the promise I gave at the beginning of this letter, and am, with cordial greetings to you and your family,
Yours, as ever,
Karl Abraham
1. Melanie Klein [1882–1960], née Reizes (she had no academic degree). Having spent her childhood in Vienna, she moved to Budapest in 1910, where she became acquainted with Freud's writings and underwent analysis with Ferenczi, who encouraged her to work with children; in July 1919 she became a member of the Hungarian Society. In 1921 she moved to Berlin, where in 1923 she became a member of the Society there and had further analysis with Abraham [1924]. After Abraham's death she moved to London, where she was supported primarily by Jones, whose children she analysed. She became a member of the British Society in 1927.
Klein brought influential innovations to the theory of early development and to the practice of child analysis. Her views on the prominent role of the very early development of an extremely differentiated fantasy life of the infant and small child, as well as her technique of direct, “deep” interpretations, found positive resonance in the London group but led, after the emigration there of many Viennese analysts, to considerable conflict with the group around Anna Freud; these “controversial discussions” were settled in 1946 with the introduction of two parallel training programs. (See Grosskurth, 1986; King & Steiner, 1991.)
2. Urverstimmung; in the translation of Abraham's work this is rendered as “primal parathymia” (1925[105]: p. 469). [Trans.]
3. Paper by Dr F. A. Loofs about “A Case of Schizophrenia” on 25 September 1923, followed by further discussion on 2 October (Zeitschrift, 1924, 10: 106). Loofs is not listed as a member of the Berlin Society; he might be identical with Friedrich O. A. Loofs [1886–?], author of a thesis on kidney diseases.
424A
Berlin-Grünewald
16 October 1923
Dear Professor,
During the last few days Rank, Lampl, and Deutsch1 have virtually vied with each other in keeping me informed about your state of health.2 Lampl came back today and gave me a full report. This is indeed a day of joy, and now that I know that there is every cause for optimism, I want to wish you and your family wholeheartedly the best of luck. I do not tend towards pessimism, as you know, and I was therefore able during these anxious days to hold on to the impression of undiminished vitality that I had so recently observed in you. And the confidence I felt did not deceive me. But I breathe more freely again now that I know that it my hope has become a reality. From the reports it appears that you are not suffering too much from the direct consequences of the operation. Thus all of us who are attached to you may permit ourselves to enjoy the great gift that fate has granted us! I have been asked by my wife, my daughter, and my son to convey all their good wishes to you.
It is customary to send convalescents of all ages pictures to look at and pleasant things to read. That is why I am sending as “printed matter” a number of new Egyptian photographs, which may give you pleasure already now or at any rate later on, and I should also like to tell you about some pleasant things.
Last night—I could not report any more about this in the circular letter—Sachs began his course on psychoanalytic technique; the rest of us do not start for another fortnight. He had an audience of about 40, a very satisfactory number for a course of this kind. My own course of introductory lectures, which had 80 to 90 participants last autumn, will no longer be held in the limited accommodation of the polyclinic, but across the road in the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht [Central Institute for Education and Instruction].
You will be pleased to hear that Frau Dr Deutsch has now got far enough to be able to do efficient theoretical work and that she is working on her investigation into the psychology of women.3 She has also completed a short article, which will probably go off to the Zeitschrift soon.4
We shall have our meeting on Saturday. Sachs and Radó will give a review of Ego and Id.5 There is no better proof of the keenness in our Society than the fact that members from outside Berlin—Foerster from Hamburg, Frau Dr Happel from Frankfurt,6 and possibly also Frau Dr Benedek from Leipzig7—will come to Berlin especially for the occasion.
I shall continue to get news from Deutsch about your health, dear Professor, and shall write again myself as soon as there is anything to tell you.
In glad confidence,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Felix Deutsch [1884–1964], M.D., general practitioner, then Freud's personal physician; husband of Helene Deutsch. Analysed by Bernfeld, he had become a member of the Vienna Society in 1922. In 1936 he followed his wife to Boston, where he became a training analyst and president of the Society there [1951–1954]. He was a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine, having already in 1919 established a clinic for “organic neuroses” and becoming the first Professor for Psychosomatic Medicine at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. (Cf. Mühlleitner, 1992: pp. 72–74; Roazen, 1985.)
2. After extensive preparations, Professor Hans Pichler [1877–1949] had performed preparatory surgery on 4 October and, on 11 October, the resection designed to remove the cancerous growth. Freud's convalescence followed a rather uncomplicated course over the next four weeks, but he had to be operated on again on 12 November—the third operation in the long series to come. (For details of Freud's medical record, see Jones, 1957; Romm, 1983; Schur, 1972.)
3. Deutsch, 1925a (in Deutsch, 1992), her paper for the psychoanalytic congress to be held in Salzburg.
4. Deutsch, 1925b (in Deutsch, 1992).
5. Meeting of 30 October (Zeitschrift, 1924, 10: 106).
6. Dr Clara Happel-Pinkus [1889–1945], analysand of Hanns Sachs. Together with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Erich Fromm, Karl Landauer, and Heinrich Meng, she founded the “Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Working Group” (1926). She emigrated to Detroit. In 1941, she was denounced by a psychotic ex-patient as an “enemy of the American people” and was imprisoned for six weeks. Unable to resume her analytical work, she eventually committed suicide.
7. Dr Therese Benedek [1892–1977], from Leipzig, where she presided over the “Society for Psychoanalytic Research”. On 24 November she was admitted as an associate member of the Berlin Society (see letter 426A, 26 November 1923). She emigrated to Chicago, where she became a training analyst. She is noted for her work on female sexuality and psychosomatic medicine.
Caricatures and photographs of Benedek and Happel, taken at the congresses in Salzburg [1924] and Lucerne [1934], in Székely-Kovács & Berény, 1954 [1924]and in Gidal & Friedrich, 1990.
425F
Vienna1
19 October 1923
Dear Incurable Optimist,
Tampon renewed today, got up, put what is left into clothes. Thanks for all news, letters, greetings, newspaper cuttings. If I can sleep without injection, I go home soon.
Cordially yours,
Freud
1. In touchingly shaky handwriting.
426A
Berlin-Grünewald
26 November 1923
Dear Professor,
It was very painful for me to hear that you had to undergo a post-operation and have therefore still some way to go to final recovery. The last reports sound reassuring, and I therefore hope that this episodes will soon be over and well behind you.
I must now thank you most sincerely for giving time and trouble to going through my paper in spite of your suffering condition. I had wanted to ask your critique for a long time, but did not wish to burden you with such matters. With the right Kück,1 you have immediately found the weak point—the chapter on mania. I have revised it in the meantime, and I think that the whole work has gained by this. During this revision I came to understand the reasons for the initial failure. I am glad, however, that you had no criticism of other large sections of my manuscript, and I was indeed touched that you tried to make your criticism of some parts more acceptable by quite a few appreciative remarks at the end. The day before yesterday I sent Rank a short addendum to the problem of mania, which I had just met with. It strikingly confirms your concept of the “feast”-character of mania and at the same time the ceremony of the liberation of the ego by an act of cannibalism. My patient told me, after a hypomanic episode of barely three days had subsided, that during that time he had felt the wish “to sate himself silly on meat”;2 so a euphoria of consuming meat.
A short paper on an infantile sexual theory3 will go off to Rank soon. A paper on a pathological impostor4 is to follow. It is always the case that a few small matters accumulate, which one has to write down.
Frau Dr Benedek of Leipzig was admitted as a member after she had given a paper on the development of the organization of society,5 which revealed very good comprehension.
The training courses are going well. Sachs and Radó have about 40 students each, I have about 80 in the introductory course, so that I have had to emigrate from the polyclinic. I now have a very nice lecture-room in the Centralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht, which is exactly opposite the polyclinic.
At the moment there are six new registrations for training analyses; so Ψα is alive in Berlin, despite the dreadful outside circumstances.
With many cordial greetings and all good wishes!
Yours,
Abraham
1. Yiddish: from the German gucken [look, peer into the distance] and alluding to a joke told by Freud: “In the temple at Cracow the Great Rabbi N. was sitting and praying with his disciples. Suddenly he uttered a cry, and, in reply to his disciples' anxious enquiries, exclaimed: ‘At this very moment the Great Rabbi L. has died in Lemberg.’ The community put on mourning for the dead man. In the course of the next few days people arriving from Lemberg were asked how the Rabbi had died and what had been wrong with him; but they knew nothing about it, and had left him in the best of health. At last it was established with certainty that the Rabbi L. in Lemberg had not died at the moment at which the Rabbi N. had observed his death by telepathy, since he was still alive. A stranger took the opportunity of jeering at one of the Cracow Rabbi's disciples about this occurrence: ‘Your Rabbi made a great fool of himself that time, when he saw the Rabbi L. die in Lemberg. The man's alive to this day.’ ‘That makes no difference’, replied the disciple. ‘Whatever you may say, the Kück from Cracow to Lemberg was a magnificent one’” (Freud, 1905c: p. 63).
2. Abraham, 1917[105]: p. 473–474.
3. Abraham, 1925[110].
4. Abraham, 1923[95]; cf. letter 294A, 16 July 1916.
5. Meeting of 24 November (Zeitschrift, 1924, 10: 106).
427A
Berlin-Grünewald
26 December 1923
Dear Professor,
The Old Year shall not come to an end without your receiving once more a direct sign of life from me. For on such an occasion one does feel that our circular letters do not make personal correspondence entirely superfluous. This letter takes a whole load of good wishes with it, and also the sincere offer to put at your disposal, dear Professor, all my tried and tested optimism for 1924!
There are scarcely four months left before the Congress.1 If I had followed my own sentiments, I should have loved to have come to Vienna for a short visit during these holidays, in order to see for myself how you are doing. You will surely not think that it was out of indifference that I have not done so. As I know that you are not yet free from symptoms, and that visitors will be many at Christmas time, I preferred to refrain and am waiting for a more favourable moment.
I am making a short journey on 5 January to Hamburg, to give a lecture there,2 which could not take place a short time ago because of the political situation. Interest is increasing in H., and I also hear favourable reports of the small circle in Leipzig.
I recently heard from Dr Weiss in Trieste3 that a distinguished psychologist, Prof. Benussi in Padua,4 who specializes in hypnosis and suggestion, would like to come into closer contact with us. He would like to be invited to the Congress. I am writing to him today in order first of all to make nerve-contact.5 I have in the background similar plans to those I mentioned in the circular letter with regard to Spain.6
Now yet another question! We have in our psychoanalytic circle a woman colleague who works in the polyclinic and is liked by everyone. She is, with her child, in a very difficult situation, and after a long struggle has agreed to accept financial support. As once before in a similar case you gave us money from a fund, I suggested to the lady in question that I would write to you about it. That was only to make it easier for her to accept it. In actual fact I will send her what is immediately necessary from my own resources. But I can do that only within certain limits, as at present I too have many other commitments. Now my question is whether I could, if necessary, in the near future ask for a financial contribution from the fund. I would approach Eitingon, but— discreet as he is—he has once more disappeared without breathing a word to me or Sachs about how long he was staying away and where he was going. As I have absolutely no wish to burden you, dear Professor, with correspondence, I am only asking you for a Yes or No on a postcard. I am not expecting any further reply to this letter!
In the meantime my Study of the Development of the Libido will presumably be in your hands. I am planning something new, and will perhaps bring it up at the Congress, if it is mature by then.
And now, once again, all good wishes for you and yours, and the most cordial greetings from your
Karl Abraham
1. Eighth International Psychoanalytic Congress, 21–23 April 1924, Salzburg. Minutes in the Zeitschrift (1924, 10: pp. 211–228).
2. Abraham, 1924[97].
3. Edoardo Weiss [1889–1970], M.D., pioneer of psychoanalysis in Italy, analysand of Paul Federn. Founding member of the first Italian Psychoanalytical Society [1925], which he re-founded in 1932 with members who had all been analysed. Founder, in the same year, of the Rivista Italiena di Psicoanalisi, the official organ of the Society. He emigrated to the United States, first to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas; he then became a Visiting Professor in Psychiatry at Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and a prominent member of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. (For his correspondence with Freud, see Weiss, 1970.)
4. Vittorio Benussi, psychologist, analysed by Otto Gross, and himself analyst of Cesare Musatti [1908–1989], a central figure in post-war psychoanalysis in Italy.
5. Nervenanhang, Schreberism; see letter 96F, 24 October 1910, & n. 2.
6. That is, to give introductory papers there (circular letter of 17 December 1923, BL).