1915
263A
Berlin W., Rankestr. 24,
Tel. Steinpl. 35661
10 January 1915
Dear Professor,
All is well again with us. I hope it is the same with you, your Ernst included! This card will only serve for keeping up our correspondence, for there is nothing important to tell you about. Rank asked me to lengthen the small manuscript for Imago2; I shall try to see whether I can do it. Many thanks for the 3rd edition. I am studying it at the moment.
Whether I can get to Vienna is very doubtful. Whether I stay in Berlin is equally so. For the time being I shall not need to leave, but in a few weeks it may be different.—In Berlin everything is unchanged: the same confidence as since the beginning. Cordial greetings to you and yours, from my wife as well!
Yours,
Abraham
1. Pre-printed letterhead.
2. Not identified. Abraham's next contribution to Imago appeared only in 1918.
264F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
25 January 1915
Dear Friend,
Such a long time has passed since your last meagre and unpleasing postcard that I must write to you again.
First about myself. Physically I am well again and in steady spirits, but am not working and have dropped everything on which I had started, including some things that were very promising. I still think it is a long polar night, and that one must wait for the sun to rise again. Whether this is part of a progressive development or just of an organic periodicity that comes to light now, in so much deprivation, can be decided only later on.
About other things I have good news for you. I was afraid that Heller would decline to continue publication of the two journals. That has not happened. The final decision will not be made till next Thursday, but we have agreed insofar that the new annual series of both shall begin in a slightly reduced form, the Internationale Zeitschrift with 6 issues as before, each of 4 signatures, and Imago with 4 issues of 6 signatures. Thus our expectations with regard to the journals have been reversed. Naturally we of the inner circle shall have to write everything ourselves and we count to a large extent on you.
I saw my son Martin in the guise of a smart corporal last Wednesday morning between two trains before he left for the Galician theatre of war. I thought in total clarity about the doubt there is whether and how we shall ever see him again.
Medical activity permanently reduced to a quarter; otherwise no news. In the last issue of his Dutch weekly van Eeden1 printed a comment about the war for which he had asked me, in which I naturally let Ψα have its say.2
I send my cordial greetings to you and yours and await your news, I hope from Berlin.
Yours,
Freud
1. See letter 237A, 29 July 1914, n. 2.
2. Freud, 1915g [1914].
265A
Berlin
30 January 1915
Dear Professor,
You have obviously not received my last letter. I have also been waiting for a reply from you daily! Let us hope this letter will reach its destination.
I am glad to hear that our journals will continue to appear. Heller is taking a certain risk, of course, as many subscribers are away from home for an indeterminate time. I will see how much I can collaborate. Recently I have been completely taken up with the hospital and the practice. I could have considerably more patients for analysis if I did not have the hospital. In the last four weeks I had a great many consultations. Perhaps Liebermann, who has been in the Vosges for five months, will soon be posted back to Berlin and will be able to back me up again. Incidentally, he has been awarded the Iron Cross.
Unfortunately there is no way of getting news about Stegmann; no one knows what has become of him.
To return to our journals: I have started a small paper about the relation between hunger and libido,1 which is chiefly to contain analytically established facts and conclusions drawn from them instead of theories á la Jung. As you know, it depends little on me when I shall be able to finish it.
It seems that now everybody in your house is fit again, as we all are here. I should like to ask you especially to tell me in your next letter what news you have of your sons.
The lost letter contained, among other things, my thanks for the Three Essays, as well as some remarks about them. I am therefore repeating my thanks.
It is striking how few people in the hospital are affected by genuine neuroses. I have seen a number of traumatic neuroses, well known to us from peacetime, in a typical form. They were all people who had had an accident at the front, such as being run over; they had not been wounded through being shot. I have seen several severe cases of hysteria in people knocked unconscious by an explosion. They generally have aphasia–abasia and hysterical attacks.
A few weeks ago I heard from Eitingon from Igló. Otherwise I have heard nothing from anybody.
I am not giving up my plan to go to Vienna, but it will have to wait some time.
With cordial greetings—also from my wife—to you and yours, both in Vienna and at the front,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. This refers to his work on “The First Pregenital Stage of the Libido” (Abraham, 1916[52]), a project already mentioned in letters 153A, 3 March 1913, and 213A, 15 May 1914.
266F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
18 February 1915
Dear Friend,
I received your letter of 30 January on 12 February and your postcard of 16 February1 today, so things seem to be better again. However, a previous letter from you seems to have gone astray. We were quite disconsolate at being cut off, we were without news from Hamburg for 282 days.
It is pleasing that all goes well with you again. It is the same with us, apart from small troubles. Martin is writing assiduously from his anonymous abode in Galicia, and greatly praises his condition; he is now in a ruined castle somewhere, quartered with German infantry. Ernst is kept under strict discipline in the training school in Klagenfurt; Oli, the last remaining one, will be called up on 3 March, but will probably volunteer beforehand for a rifle battalion. He would prefer to go into a railway regiment as a qualified technician, but cannot find a way in.
I cannot report any further development of the practice. At the end of this week my daily sessions will be reduced from 4 to 3. I have finished something new on melancholia, it is now with Ferenczi, who will forward it to you.3 The first issue of the Zeitschrift is at the printer's; the introductory article is a technical contribution by me4 which I am sending you so that you may kindly let me know what you think of it. I propose to send as much as possible to the Zeitschrift. We know that we can count on you as far and as soon as you can.
Pfister is drawing very close to us, and has contributed a critical paper on the “arson” of the splendid Z. Schmid5; and he has also sent us a short essay by a new worker, who draws an analogy between our libido and Plato's theory of Eros. (A Dr Nachmannsohn of Zurich.)6
Rank showed me a letter from Jones yesterday. He is very well, is doing ten analyses a day, etc. His group has suspended its meetings and appears to be seriously split.7
All interest is concentrated on events that are to begin on the 18th, that is to say, today.8 May they bring us victory and therewith liberation and peace. This time I am inclined towards optimism.9
I send my cordial greetings to you and to your dear wife, and hope to be hearing from you more often from now on.
Yours,
Freud
1. Missing.
2. Reading uncertain, but likely.
3. A draft of “Mourning and Melancholia” (Freud, 1917e [1915]), sent to Ferenczi on 7 February, who then forwarded it to Abraham. I found this hitherto unknown draft at the Freud Archives (LOC, container B7) and reprinted it in the second volume of the Freud/Ferenczi correspondence (1996: pp. 47–49) [E.F.].
4. Freud, 1915a.
5. Pfister, 1915—a polemical review of a paper on arson by Dr Hans Schmid, which had appeared in the Psychologische Abhandlungen, edited by Jung. Pfister particularly criticized Schmid's methodological errors and his “unmistakable tendency to belittle Freud and to elevate Jung” (pp. 152–153).
6. Nachmannsohn, 1915. In 1921, Nachmannsohn moved to Göttingen in Germany and joined the Berlin Society (circular letter, 1 July 1921, BL).
7. In the London Society, controversies persisted during the war years; some members, among them David Eder, the Secretary, approached Jung's ideas. “Our society has not met since last autumn, owing to Eder's attitude…. I hope to get him to resign his position so that we can meet without him in October”, wrote Jones to Freud on 17 June 1915 (Freud & Jones, 1993: p. 310). Jones's efforts to establish a unified direction foundered, whereupon he finally dissolved the Society and re-established it on 20 February 1919 as the British Psycho-Analytical Society, this time without Eder.
8. Probably an allusion to Germany's declaration of the U-boat warfare and a blockade against England the previous day.
9. This word in Latin characters and in English in original.
267A
Berlin
28 February 1915
Dear Professor,
This time I received your letter within three to four days. I hope mine will also reach you without difficulty.
I must first of all thank you for the proofs. I found nothing to criticize, from the first word to the last. To my great satisfaction, everything in this paper corresponds with my own experiences. When I say that this is the first of your papers that did not give me anything new, this should naturally only mean that this time I have not been compelled to learn anything anew. On the other hand my own observations were not yet so clearly organized; I therefore could still learn quite a great deal from the way the paper is structured.
I can only occasionally find time for writing. I am working on the short paper on pleasure from sucking. If I can carry the plan out, I should like to publish it as No. 1 in a small series, which is to deal with the pregenital organizations. I recently began treatment of a relatively simple case of obsessional neurosis that overwhelmingly confirms the theory you put forward in Munich.1 I should like to present this as No. 2 of the series, and No. 3 would then contain some contributions on the symptomatology of anal erotism.2—I have only just been able to study at leisure the new edition of the Three Essays. I have always had a preference for this work. I like it just as much in its new form. The findings of the last ten years fit in very well with the earlier ones.3
I often think how the war saved us from unpleasant discussions with the Swiss. When it is over we shall go our separate ways.
We too are wondering what our blockade against England will achieve. There are no authentic reports so far, but in the light of previous experiences, we may expect amazing facts to be disclosed one day. Our new war loan will probably be another complete success.4
It is still uncertain what is going to happen to me. For the time being I am still working at the hospital. However, the younger doctors in our hospital have gradually been called up, and it might be my turn at any time.
I hope you will have further good news of your sons; please do keep me up to date about their situation.
With cordial greetings, also from my wife, to you and all your family,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Cf. Freud, 1913i.
2. Abraham's interest in pregenital stages of libido development would result in several articles, assembled in his classical books (1924[105], 1925[106]).
3. For a list of the additions to the third edition of Freud, 1905d, see the note in Freud & Ferenczi, 1996: pp. 30–31.
4. The second German war loan brought subscriptions of 9 billion marks.
268F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
4 March 1915
Dear Friend,
The means change, but the result is the same. When you say that my last contribution taught you nothing new, it is as gratifying to me as your usual emphasizing of the opposite. I believe this contribution to be the best and most useful of the whole series, so I am prepared for it to evoke the strongest opposition.
Your announcement of a series of articles, which I take as a definite promise, is highly welcome. After all, we do wish to keep the journals alive at all costs during the war and to manage them in such a way that later we shall be able to come up with them with satisfaction. But the authors are very few. We shall have to do everything ourselves. I have decided to publish three chapters of my germinating summary (drives, repression, Ucs.)1 gradually in the Zeitschrift. For Imago I am even writing a piece of topical claptrap about war and death2 to keep the self-sacrificing publisher happy. All this naturally against inner resistance.
“My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here.”3 Namely in the Dardanelles, where the fate of Europe is perhaps being decided; in the classical country,4 the inhabitants of which are supposed to be about to declare war on us in the next few days,5 with the result that the places that I have most enjoyed being in will be closed to me for my remaining years; and on the North Sea, on which it will be a long time before one can travel again. Enough!
Only the best of news comes from Martin, who is shooting somewhere in Galicia. Ernst is probably staying in Klagenfurt for another few weeks. Oli was rejected at the medical examination for military service yesterday and so has a few months to take his final exams. My son-in-law in Hamburg has also been deferred for the present. The tension under which we are living is often unbearably high. I should like to go to Berlin and Hamburg again, but the mark now stands at over 135. So we cannot travel.
I send my cordial greetings to you and to your dear wife, and hope you will be allowed to remain in Berlin, where, after all, doctors are also needed.
Yours,
Freud
1. Freud, 1915c, 1915d, 1915e; see letter 256F, 25 November 1914, & n. 1.
2. Freud, 1915b.
3. First lines of a poem by Robert Burns [1810–1876] (Burns, 1986: p. 390).
4. Referring to the offensive of the allied troops at Gallipoli near the Dardanelles (and also near Troy), which had started on 19 February 1915 and lasted until 19 January 1916.
5. Turkey would remain with the Central Powers, however.
269A
Berlin1
5 March 1915
Dear Professor,
This is only to tell you that I have received the small manuscript on melancholia from Ferenczi. Once I have studied it in detail I shall send it back to you.
With cordial greetings,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Postcard.
270A
Dear Professor,
I arrived here yesterday and shall be doing surgical work, though I hope to have more time for my own work than I had at home. I have brought with me the paper I recently promised you. My address is: Allenstein (East Prussia), garrison hospital I, Hohensteinerstrasse.— What is your news, what do you hear from your sons? I hope that here too I shall hear from you frequently.
With cordial greetings to you, your house, and the friends there,
Yours,
Abraham
1. Postcard.
2. Allenstein/Olsztyn, about 175 km north of Warsaw, in today's Poland.
271F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
15 March 1915
Dear Friend,
Our warmest good wishes accompany you in your new work, which I hope will give you the opportunity to see your family and sometimes also leisure to do your intended writings.
I ask you to retain the presidency, which is now a sinecure in any case. If you agree, we propose to announce, in the first issue of the Zeitschrift on which we are now working, that because of your call-up, publication of the 1915 Jahrbuch is now doubtful, but that publication of the two other journals will continue.1 When I have finished this letter I shall begin to write out “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes”.2
You will have heard that we consider peace in the south to be certain. If we ever see San Martino again, we shall be able to visit it only as guests. Mind you, I preferred Karersee,3 which remains with us.
In eager expectation of your news,
Your faithfully devoted
Freud
1. Zeitschrift, 1915, 3: 64.
2. Freud, 1915c.
3. Two locations in the South Tyrol, which as a whole became part of Italy after the war.
272F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
27 March 1915
Dear Friend,
I eagerly await your news from your new abode, but I myself have little to tell you.
I am working slowly and steadily on the papers for Imago and the Zeitschrift, and have found confirmation of the solution of melancholia in a case I studied for two months, though without visible therapeutic success, which, however, may follow.
My son1 writes from the North that he is living in unpleasant and difficult conditions and has not felt well since his typhus vaccination, but hopes to improve. The other one is still awaiting his destiny in Klagenfurt.
The summer problem is naturally more difficult this year than ever, in fact as a result of all the uncertainties it is actually insoluble. We have to wait.
How are you and your work? What do the children say about papa's absence? How is your dear wife managing alone?
With cordial greetings from us to all of you,
Yours,
Freud
1. Martin.
273A
Deutsch Eylau
31 March 1915
Dear Professor,
I have long postponed commenting on your outline of a theory of melancholia—and not only because I have no real peace for work. Some years ago I myself made an attempt in this direction1 but was always aware of its imperfections, and was therefore afraid that my attitude to your new theory might well be too subjective. I think that I have now got over this difficulty and am able to accept all the essentials in your work. I do think, however, that one element from my earlier work should be more heavily stressed than it is in yours and should like to put forward a suggestion that may solve the question left open by you. Important questions do naturally remain unresolved, and I have no explanation for them at the present time.2
I should like to remind you—not in order to stress any priority but merely to underline the points of agreement—that I also started from a comparison between melancholic depression and mourning. I found support in your paper on obsessional neurosis (the Rat Man),3 which had just been published, and stressed that sadism was important because its intensity does not allow the capacity for love to arise; and I deduced depression from a perception of one's inability to love. I had to leave completely unanswered the question of why melancholia develops in one case and obsession in another. At the time, two important papers of yours were still to be written: “Narcissism”4 and “Pregenital Organizations”.5 I recently wrote to you to say how completely convinced I was, particularly by this new concept of obsessional neurosis. If therefore, as you will surely acknowledge, there is a relationship between obsessional neurosis and melancholia, the new insight into obsessional neurosis will also shed light on melancholia.
Of the two important factors in the genesis of obsessional neurosis— sadism and anal erotism—I strongly stressed the importance in melancholia of the former in my paper of 1911. I must still hold to this view. Too much violence and criminality was uncovered in the analyses of my melancholic patients. The self-reproaches do indicate repressed hostile feelings. The complete motor inhibition leads one also to assume that strong motor impulses have had to be made harmless. The same tendency is manifest in the way the melancholic torments those around him. Added to this is the reappearance of the most open sadism in the manic phase. These are only a few of the reasons why I still rate this factor as highly as ever.
On the other hand, I think, reconsidering my cases, that one should not assume that anal erotism is of extraordinary significance in melancholia. If I am right in this assumption (which still needs to be confirmed, because at the time of the analyses of the cases in 1911 I had no knowledge yet of the importance of anal erotism in obsessional neurosis and may possibly have overlooked it in melancholia), then this may well be the point where these conditions, which in other ways are so closely related, diverge.
To proceed further from here, I must revert to what you say in your paper under (3).6 Even though I do not yet see that the melancholic displaces onto himself all the reproaches that are aimed at his love-object and that serve to denigrate it, all that you say about identification with the love-object is perfectly clear to me. Perhaps I could not fully grasp this because of the compression of your arguments. With my patients it appeared to me as if the melancholic, incapable of loving as he is, desperately tries to get possession of a love-object. In my experience, he does in fact identify with his love-object, cannot tolerate its loss, and is hyper-sensitive to the slightest unfriendliness, etc. from that side. He often allows himself to be tormented by the loved person in masochistic self-punishment. He reproaches himself for this instead of reproaching the loved person because unconsciously he has done far greater harm to that person (omnipotence of thought). That is how I deduced it in my analyses. But as you well know, dear Professor, I am ready to re-learn. I only regret that our discussion has to be carried on by letter.
What harm has the melancholic in fact done to the object with whom he identifies?
The answer to this is suggested to me in one of your recent papers— I think it is the one on narcissism (?). There you discuss identification and you point to the infantile basis of this process: the child wants to incorporate its love-object: to put it briefly, it wants to devour it.7 I have strong reason to suspect that such cannibalistic tendencies exist in the melancholic's identification. It may be safely assumed that this identification has an ambivalent meaning—a manifestation of love as well as destruction.
The first argument I would advance is the melancholic's fear of starvation. Food has taken the place of love here. I would assume that the role played by the anal zone in obsessional neurosis is assigned to the mouth in melancholia. In menopausal depressions in particular, the fear of starvation plays a dominant role. A further dominant symptom is the refusal of food. In other calmer and more chronic cases, food in the positive sense is of excessive importance.
Also of interest is the classic form of depressive delusions found in earlier centuries, called lycanthropy. This is the delusion of being a werewolf and of having eaten men! Such delusions are not so rare even nowadays. I should mention here a characteristic and rather curious expression, which, up till quite recently, somewhat crude psychiatrists would use towards patients believed to be suffering from delusional self-reproaches they did not wish to reveal. They would say the following: “What have you done, have you perhaps devoured small children?” Such so-called jokes have to be rooted somehow in real experience.
I think that the impoverishment of the ego becomes more comprehensible in this way. The ego does not, as it were, get the food it wants. It has lost its content (that is to say, that which it wanted to incorporate).
It seems to me that we ought to agree easily, provided the above ideas are not too wrong. The basic points of your exposition: the melancholic has lost something but does not know what; the impoverishment of the ego and all that is connected with it; the identification with the love-object; the localization of the process of mourning in the ego-cathexes; the dissolving of object-cathexes in narcissistic identification—all this should definitely stand. I think sadism and oral eroticism should be added.
I should like to ask you, dear Professor, for unsparing criticism, but also for a more detailed explanation wherever I may have misunderstood your very condensed arguments.
I shall probably stay here in Deutsch Eylau only until 5 April; I will then be back in Allenstein. I shall give you my address there, and ask you not to write to me earlier, so that your letter is sure to reach me.
Otherwise I am well. Both Allenstein and Deutsch Eylau are in midst of beautiful country, which I am enjoying very much. The work is not unbearably heavy.
Hoping to receive good news from you and yours—such as I have from my own at home—I am,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Abraham, 1911[26].
2. Most of the following points were raised and discussed at greater length in Abraham, 1916[52].
3. Freud, 1909d.
4. Freud, 1914c.
5. Freud, 1913i.
6. “One often gets the impression that the self-reproaches of melancholia are none other than reproaches against someone else, which are directed away from him onto one's own ego. There is thus an identification of the ego with the libidinal object. The ego mourns because it has lost its object through devaluation, but it projects this object onto itself and then finds itself devalued. The shadow of the object falls on the ego and obscures it. The process of mourning is not carried out on the object cathexes, but rather on the ego cathexes” (in Freud & Ferenczi, 1996: p. 48).
7. In the third edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (which had just appeared; cf. letter 267A, 28 February 1915), Freud had introduced, for the first time, the concept of an oral-cannibalistic organization of the libido, the aim of which “consists in the incorporation of the object—the prototype of a process which, in the form of identification, is later to play such an important psychological part” (1905d: p. 198). He also raised this point in “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” (1915c: p. 138), which he was just in the process of writing.
274A
Allenstein1
17 April 1915
Sender: Dr Karl Abraham
Allenstein (East Prussia)
Zeppelinstr. 1, Pension Graw.2
Dear Professor,
This is only to give you the news that I am back in Allenstein and am looking forward to your news.
Cordial greetings to you and yours from your
Karl Abraham
1. Picture postcard with Schloß Allenstein.
2. Reading uncertain.
275A
Allenstein, Garrison Hospital
26 April 1915
Dear Professor,
Your card of the 19th1 reached me fairly quickly, as did the parcel with the proofs.2 I have so far cursorily read through the latter once and should therefore prefer to say nothing about them today. At any rate, it is good to know that the concepts we constantly use are being properly clarified for once. I enjoyed reading the short paper on war3; my wife is at present reading it in Berlin. You were wrong when you wrote deprecatingly about this work some time ago. There can scarcely be any disagreement between us concerning our viewpoint on these matters. I shall therefore only add that I liked this paper very much and that I am eagerly anticipating the chapter on death. While reading your work, I was struck by an interesting parallel. What is forbidden to the individual in normal circumstances, he must do in such times as these, and in fact in company with all other men. Exactly the same applies to the totem meal, where the whole community consumes the animal that the individual is usually not permitted to touch.
I am glad to know that all is well with you and your family. Please do keep letting me know how your sons get on! I am getting on quite well here. Beside my work I have enough free time to myself; I am using it partly for the promised paper on the oral phase,4 which is now largely finished. I am expecting my wife to visit in eight days, though she can stay here only for a short time. If I should have to spend the summer in A., my wife and children will choose this town for their summer holidays. Allenstein is very prettily situated in a region with forests and lakes only about 40 kilometres west of the Masurian lakes. We will perhaps take furnished rooms and keep house here.
One of your letters, dear Herr Professor, which you wrote to me soon after I was posted here, arrived very late because it was inadequately addressed. In this letter you asked me about my children's reaction to my leaving. I have some nice stories to tell about our little boy. In fact my daughter was also delighted with my uniform, which I had been wearing for some time in Berlin. She was particularly impressed by the soldiers' salutes. The little boy took the matter in a very different way, in accordance with his gender and age. He was most impressed by my rapier. I promised that I would let him wear it sometime. He was speechless with delight when I put the weapon on him. The impression stayed with him. The next day he said in front of the whole family at dinner: another father would not have done that—given me his rapier to wear. This harmless incident must have served to change the child's hostile feelings into their opposite. What he said probably means: if I were in possession of this precious weapon, I would not have given it to anyone else. He was obviously struck by my magnanimity. During the following days he was extremely affectionate, but there was something in his behaviour that illuminated for me the psychology of vassals. For example, on one occasion I was pacing up and down in the room. Because of my heavy army boots, my gait was different from what it usually is. The little fellow immediately fell into step with me, walked behind me, and imitated the length, rhythm, and heaviness of every step I took. He has obviously identified with me ever since I lent him the sword. This is also apparent from games he is now playing at home.
In the hospital I am working with a Privatdozent at Binswanger's clinic in Jena,5 Dr H. Schultz, who wrote a criticism of Ψα in the Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie [Journal of Applied Psychology]6 some time ago. I have naturally not touched on the subject of Ψα but have let him approach, and at the moment am busy with demonstrating to him his easily recognizable resistances.
In the last few days reports from the West are very satisfying. It is odd how the diametrically opposed parts of the theatre of war—Flanders and East Galicia/Bukowina—are the only ones in which field warfare is going on.
I add my cordial greetings to you and your family and to the friends in Vienna.
As always,
Yours, as ever,
Karl Abraham
Please address letters to:
Allenstein (East Prussia)
Garrison Hospital
1. Missing.
2. Probably of Freud, 1915c.
3. Freud, 1915b, Part I, “The Disillusionment of the War”. Part II, “Our Attitude Towards Death”, is a slightly altered version of a lecture Freud had given at the B'nai B'rith Lodge on 16 February 1915 (cf. Meghnagi, 1993: pp. 11–39; letter 268F, 4 March 1915, & n. 2).
4. Cf. letter 267A, 28 February 1915, & n. 2.
5. See letter 15A, 8 January 1908, n. 10.
6. Schultz, 1909. Johannes Heinrich Schultz [1884–1970], German psychiatrist and psychotherapist, from 1919 on professor in Jena, from 1936 on director of the Berlin Institute for Psychotherapy; introduced autogenic training.
276F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
4 May 1915
Dear Friend,
A fortnight of being cut off from Germany has at last ended. Today I received, together with your nice letter, 12 postcards from my wife in Hamburg! I now hasten to send you the long-delayed reply.
Your comments on melancholia were very valuable to me. I unhesitatingly incorporated in my paper those parts of them that I could use. What was most valuable to me was the reference to the oral phase of the libido, and I also mention the link with mourning.1 Your request for severe criticism caused me no difficulty; I liked practically everything you wrote. I should like to make only two points: that you do not bring out sufficiently the essential feature of the assumption, that is to say the topical element, the regression of the libido, and the abandonment of the unconscious object cathexis, but instead put into the foreground sadism and anal erotism as explanatory motifs. Though you are correct in this, you overlook the real explanation. Anal erotism, the castration complex, etc., are ubiquitous sources of excitation that have their part in every symptom. Sometimes one thing comes of them and sometimes another; it is naturally always a task to find out what has become out of what, but the explanation of the illness can be derived only from the mechanism, seen from the dynamic, topical, and economic point of view. I know that soon you will agree with me.
The work is now taking shape. I have five essays ready: that on Instincts and their vicissitudes, which may well be rather arid, but indispensable as an introduction, also finding its justification in those that follow, then Repression, the Unconscious, Metapyschological supplement to the theory of dreams, and Mourning and melancholia. The first four are to be published in the just started volume of the Zeitschrift, all the rest I am keeping for myself. If the war lasts long enough, I hope to get together about a dozen such papers and in quieter times to offer them to the ignorant world under the title: Essays in Preparation of a Metapsychology. I think that on the whole it will represent progress. Manner and level like the VIIth chapter of the Interpretation of Dreams.2
I finished the paper on melancholia a quarter of an hour ago. I shall have it typewritten3 to send you a copy. In exchange, you promise further comments.
My eldest is doing well in Galicia, has reached the highest NCO rank and calls himself a fireworks-maker. I do not yet know whether he was involved in the last affair. His card of 26 April sounded still quite idyllic. Ernst, still in Klagenfurt, has taken his officer's examination with particularly good results and is waiting. He will probably soon become a platoon leader (***). You can guess what he is waiting for. There is bound to be a decision soon with regard to Italy, and the indications are that it will not be a peaceful one.4 What a pity that the victory celebrations of these days,5 for which we have been waiting for so long, are marred by this prospect. Our admiration of our great ally increases daily!
It was very nice of you to like even the “Thoughts for the Times”. You will soon receive the continuation about “Death”. Your remark about the analogy with the totem meal is absolutely accurate. It is interesting how the slightest trace of affective mood in the author restricts the view. What you write about your children is very pithy. There is always something to see and to understand.
We have all managed with an unexpected adaptability to get used to the war, with the result that we too can say we are well. The biggest surprise to me is my ability not to miss my practice and earnings. I fail to see how I shall ever again get used to a working day of six or eight hours—I had been used to 10. Is one's elasticity equally great in both directions? We like to quote an advertisement that is very common here: “It is easy to get used to the pleasant taste.” By the time you read this, I shall be 59 years old, which should perhaps give me a right for comfort, but I have no way of staking my claim to it. So C.C.! and let us leave something for those who will follow, too.
I hope that you too will make frequent use of the reopened postal connection, and please give your dear wife my cordial greetings.
Your old
Freud
1. Cf. Freud, 1916–17e: pp. 243 and 250.
2. See letter 256F, 25 November 1914, & n. 1.
3. English in original.
4. On 4 May Italy had denounced the Dreibundvertrag of 1882; on 23 May she would declare war on Austria–Hungary.
5. Referring to the breaching of the Russian front at Gorlice-Tarnow [2 to 7 May], followed by an offensive in Galicia and the recapturing of Przemysl [on 3 June].
277A
Allenstein, Garrison Hospital
3 June 1915
Dear Professor,
You are right—it is indeed a long time since I last wrote to you. Your reminder will now at least have a result. I shall first tell you about all that has happened in the meantime. My wife spent the first week of May with me. We had some beautiful days together, although my duties kept me fairly busy. Shortly after my wife's departure your letter arrived, but, almost at the same time, came the news that our little boy had fallen ill with diphtheria immediately after his mother's return. That gave me a worrying time, mitigated only by the fact that I could telephone Berlin every day. At times, indeed, even this was not possible because of a communications block. Two serum injections helped our patient very well. He is already quite lively again, but must still be kept quiet and suffers still from a quite mild albuminuria and paresis of the soft palate.—For the last fortnight I have been overwhelmed with work, sometimes even at night. I waited in vain for a day of peaceful writing. Today, because of the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is Sunday working in the hospital, which lets me carry out my intention at last.
I will first continue my report of last time and tell you some more about our small son, who really is a pillar of Ψα. I think I did not tell you what his parting words were when I left for Allenstein in March. You may remember that I had gained his confidence and admiration through the incident with the rapier. When saying good-bye, he only said: “Papa, perhaps you will win the battle!” The best he has produced so far came after my wife's return from Allenstein. On the day after her arrival, my wife's siblings came to dinner. During the meal, the little chap asked to speak: “Mummy, while you were in Allenstein I kept having a dream” (“dream” is what both children call their daydreams). My wife unsuspectingly asked him what he had dreamt. The answer: “I kept on thinking when mama comes back from papa whether there would soon be a baby growing inside her.” I should mention that our children have been told about pregnancy and birth in a matter-of-fact way but not about conception. They have never asked about it. I have no idea where else the child could have heard about it, and I think that he must have put two and two together for himself. I have already told you of his jealousy and his wish to have his mother all to himself. This omnipotent position also includes having children with the mother. Our bedroom has always aroused his curiosity; in the morning he has often tried to look through the keyhole. There can definitely be no question of his having observed anything at night. The following shows that nevertheless he had the right ideas. When he had diphtheria, he was kept in isolation in his room. During the subsequent disinfecting my wife was forced to take him into our bedroom for two nights before he could return to his sister. He was beside himself with delight. Already beforehand he had asked questions such as: Does papa allow this? And then: Does he allow me to put my hanky under his pillow, too? (This surely seems to be an obvious displacement of his real wishes onto something “very small”?)1 When the night he had waited for arrived at last, the bedside table with the chamber-pot in it had a magical attraction for him. He woke frequently during the two nights only in order to use it. Here one of the frequent infantile theories plays a role.2 I suspect the “dream” is explicable from that point of view. There is other evidence for this, but it would take too long to report it all.
As regards the question of melancholia, I am now fully in agreement with you on one point—that I had not sufficiently appreciated the mechanism, that is to say the topographical aspect. One other point remains: the postulation in your short manuscript that reproaches that are actually directed against another person are transposed to one's own ego. I am not yet convinced of this. I do not remember your bringing detailed proof in your paper. If it does not involve too much trouble, I should like to have a letter from you explaining more exactly what you mean and how you account for it.
I read with great pleasure of your plans for further work, especially in connection with your remark about your 59th birthday. You have, naturally, dear Herr Professor, my good wishes on this occasion. Omnipotence of thought is, however, not yet sufficiently established for us to expect much benefit from good wishes alone.—Many thanks for the paper on “Death”. It has only one fault, that it is not a little longer. I mean this in two ways: (1) because I would have liked to read more of it, and (2) because the extremely short résumé of the taboo-totem paper may not be convincing to outsiders. I had the impression that writing this paper did not give you the satisfaction you usually get and that this accounts for its brevity. It is different with the “Vicissitudes”. I must agree with your own judgement—that it is somewhat “arid” but that it makes an excellent basis for what is to follow!
I hope to hear only good news about you and yours, especially about your warring sons. Are your sons-in-law now on the field too? My wife's brother has for a short time been near Königsberg. Perhaps I will see him sometime.
Since 1 June I have been living in the hospital as medical officer on night duty. There is a slight possibility that a Psychiatric Department may be set up sometime, and I shall probably be in charge of it. However, everything is still uncertain. Also, whether I will stay in Allenstein.
I watch the great events as optimistically as ever. Morale here has not even been shaken by Italy. One would never have imagined what a nation is capable of in wartime when attacked from all sides. It reminds one of analogies in the life of the individual.—We may expect further rapid progress after the fall of Przemysl.
With the most cordial greetings to you and yours,
Your
Karl Abraham
1. Cf. Freud, 1909d: p. 241, 1912–13: p. 87.
2. That is, infantile notions of conception and of “being married” (cf. Freud, 1908c: pp. 222, 224, 1918b [1914]: pp. 92–93).
278F
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
3 July 1915
Dear Friend,
My having failed to answer you for so long is due not to one single motivation, but to a very multiple one, which I shall now try to break down into its component parts. First of all there was probably an intention to imitate you in your long silence, which had already caused me concern. This was, indeed, not groundless, as your child's severe illness fell into that interval. Then there was the impact of our splendid victories, which expressed itself in increased working ability, with the result that today I am already working on the 11th of the intended 12 papers. As a result of the interval I got into a muddle and do not know what I have already sent to you. Some of what has already passed the manuscript stage is indeed transportable. I am in a similar situation with Ferenczi, who is so much nearer and turns up in Vienna occasionally. Our correspondence undergoes the strangest interruptions, and I cannot remember what I have told him and what I have not. I think I regard the situation as a repetition of the initial one, when I was productive and— isolated. All my friends and helpers have now really become soldiers, and it is as if they were removed from me. Even Rank, who has remained in Vienna, has not appeared since his call-up. He is serving with the heavy artillery. Sachs will be going into the army service corps in Linz.1
Now, to continue by association: my son Martin tells me that he is finally on Russian soil, but gives hints that can only mean that he will soon have a finer summer abode—in Know'st-thou-the-land,2 or first of all in the foreland. Ernst is still unoccupied in Wiener Neustadt and often visits us. Oli, who is still free, has in the meantime taken his last engineering examination and is at present helping his uncle3 in his empty tariff office. On the same day as he, my last daughter qualified as a certificated primary-school teacher. So we have been an industrious family.
On top of all this there was added a third motivation, an absence of several days from Vienna while I was in the country of Berchtesgaden. I liked it so tremendously, it so far exceeded the memory of the five summers I spent there, that the only explanation I can offer is that my libido, having been set free by the loss of Italy, would want to settle there. Our plans for the summer have now taken shape. The two of us will be going to Karlsbad a fortnight today, from there probably to the Königsee or Berchtesgaden, with an interruption in August for a visit to Ischl on the occasion of my mother's 80th birthday. (My father reached the age of 81/2, my eldest brother the same age—gloomy prospects!) Naturally in these times all plans are rather uncertain. “What becomes of the hopes, what becomes of the plans, built by Man, that transient creature!”4
I should gladly tell you more about melancholia, but could do it properly only if we met and talked. Have I not sent you the typed5 manuscript of “Mourning and Melancholia”?
A book by Putnam called Human Motives6 appeared yesterday; it is a popular work forming part of a series, Jung-free but in the service of his own hobby-horse. I enclose half of the cover, should it pass the censoring. Otherwise I hear only of neutral (and Hungarian) attempts at translation.
I shall be very glad to hear that your hopeful young son has fully recovered and that you are really working in a psychiatric department. My cordial greetings and good wishes to you and your dear wife.
Yours,
Freud
1. Town on the Danube, approximately 150 km west of Vienna.
2. That is, Italy. Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn? [Know'st thou the land where the lemon trees blossom?]; song of Mignon in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (3, 1); also set to music by Franz Schubert; in Ambroise Thomas's [1811–1896] opera Mignon [1866].
3. Freud's brother Alexander.
4. See letter 244F, 25 August 1914, & n. 8.
5. In English in original.
6. Putnam, 1915.
279A
Allenstein
6 July 1915
Dear Professor,
I was just going to write to you to ask about the reason for your silence, when your letter arrived. I am glad to hear that it was only delayed for psychological reasons. One so easily fears other reasons in these times. I fully understand your feeling of scientific isolation, and am myself one of those who is failing to liberate you from it. But it has been weeks since I was able to add a line to my still unfinished paper. The hospital work takes up almost all my time. My duties as a psychiatrist are, incidentally, only a side-line. In the main, I have become a surgeon, not only an assistant or dresser, but an operating surgeon, too. The psychoanalyst in me stands amazed while I operate on a hydrocele or carry out a rib resection because of empyema. But war is war.
I have recently regained my good spirits. There was a very worrying period again between my last letter and this one. About a fortnight ago I had most alarming news from Bremen about my father, had to rush off there and found him very ill. He had severe neuralgia of the left arm, partly connected with his heart, and was greatly weakened by the resultant sleeplessness, morphine, and accompanying feverish bronchitis. When I arrived, the illness had already passed its climax, and he recovered so much before my eyes that I was able to leave after a few days. He is now slowly improving. On my return journey, I stayed one day in Berlin. Our boy is still rather weak after his severe illness, he still had paresis of the soft palate, which made eating difficult. The albuminuria is over. My wife has been in Fürstenberg (Mecklenburg) with the children for a short time, where the forest and the water will do them good. Unfortunately we are completely restricted to telegraphic communication; my wife has not had one line from me for eight days. Anyhow, you know these occasional disturbances there too. Great events cast their shadows before.1
I hope to be able to have 8–14 days' leave in August to be with my family. Your travel plans awoke great longing in me. I should be only too glad to go to the Alps, and I would not mind visiting you in Berchtesgaden. But we cannot plan anything yet.
Regarding your new papers—I am amazed at your productivity during recent months—I have only read what has appeared in print in the meantime. We have only corresponded about mourning and melancholia. I look forward to all that is to come! Incidentally, I shall in my virtually completed paper on the mouth zone make some allusions to the connections I mentioned to you some time ago. When the manuscript is ready, I shall send it to you and not to Rank. This seems safer at present.
Some more about psychology. My son is recently disowning me in a characteristic way. When my wife once said to him, “Hilde is papa's daughter and you are papa's son”, he strongly denied this. On being asked who he thought he was, he replied: “I am papa's half-brother”. On my journey to Bremen during the night after receiving the bad news, I had a very nice dream, with my dead dog, which has recurred since childhood, with all the signs of infantile hostility. You will be interested to hear of a slip of the pen in your letter which arrived today. You mention the forthcoming 80th birthday of your mother and add that your father reached the age of 8½ years.
I spend the little free time I have enjoying the beautiful woods of these surroundings. East Prussia offers great natural beauties, especially because of the large lakes lying between wooded hills.
We are pleased here about the successful defence of the Austrian Alps, and no less about the great victories in Galicia.2 In spite of the fact that one cannot see the end anywhere in sight, morale remains firm and confident.
With many cordial greetings and best wishes to you all at home and at the front,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. “'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, / And coming events cast their shadows before”, from Thomas Campbell's [1777–1844] Lochiel's Warning. Lord Byron chose this as motto for his Prophecy of Dante (1821).
2. Particularly the recapturing of Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, on 22 June.
280F
Karlsbad, Rudolfshof
1 August 1915
Dear Friend,
I was delighted to hear from you at all, though not all your news is pleasing, but as variegated as life itself is now. Fortunately none of it was definitely bad, however. The psychoanalyst may be surprised, but must adapt.
We arrived here a fortnight ago and found that this bubble-town still keeps its old magic: the food is good, and the place is much quieter than it used to be. Officers with Iron Crosses instead of the ladies1 in crazy dresses. Apart from a disturbance caused by my wife's having some tooth trouble, we can say that we are very well. We are actually thinking of staying on for an extra week. In the middle of August we want to be in Ischl for grandmother's 80th birthday (incidentally, 81/2 was not a slip of the pen, but my usual way of writing 81–82, taken over from the dream notes, e.g. “dream of 8/9 August”). Our daughter is already in Ischl.
Ernst should have left for Galicia yesterday. Martin has been through some severe fighting, a bullet grazed his right arm and another went through his cap, both without disturbing his capacity for action. He has been praised for bravery. In his last postcard he mentions the possibility of a fortnight's leave. He has been out there since 20 January.
I have completed my 12 papers here. (“War-time atrocities”, like a great many other things.) Several, like for example that on consciousness, still require thorough revision. Censorship seems now to have made the sending of manuscripts much more difficult. What else will still have to fall before the book can go to print, one cannot say.
Correspondence is silent. Lou Andreas has promised a paper on “Anal and Sexual”.2 The editorial board of Imago bristles with arms. My house in Vienna is open, and is thus the best address for correspondence.
I hope this letter will be forwarded to you in Mecklenburg.
With cordial greetings
Your faithfully devoted
Freud
1. In English in original.
2. Andreas-Salomé, 1916.
281A
Fürstenberg in Mecklenburg, Villa Undine
27 August 1915
Dear Professor,
A week ago I began a fortnight's leave and am here with my family, all of them are well and I am recovering from the over-strenuous efforts of the preceding time quite well. I am staying here until the morning of Monday the 30th and then going to Bremen—my father, unfortunately, is still not well after a bad attack of pleuritis exsudativa1—and will probably be back in Berlin on Wednesday, or Thursday 2 September at the latest. I am hoping to get another week of extra leave and would like to ask you whether it would be possible to meet. I should like to spend the extra leave (always providing I get it!) with my wife outside Berlin. However, I cannot travel far. I have to be prepared for a possible summons by telegraph, even though it is not probable. Now, I do not know how long you are staying in Ischl—incidentally my hearty congratulations to you and yours for the family festival you are celebrating there!— and whether you are then going to Berchtesgaden. The latter would be difficult for me with the current poor connections, over 24 hours from Allenstein. Would you and your wife, dear Herr Professor, like a rendezvous between Berlin and Munich? For example, Lauenstein Castle near the express train station of Probstzelle, exactly halfway between B[erlin] and M[unich], would be lovely. I once told you about this splendid little place; you stay there in the wonderful castle chambers furnished in the old-fashioned style. It is very beautifully situated, surrounded by much forest. The food is plain and good. Perhaps you will also be attracted by the abundance of mushrooms and berries in the region. The post and telegraph offices are close at hand. Only transport is not as good as in peacetime. As far as I can see, an express train leaves Munich at 8:20 in the morning; arrives in Bamberg at 11: 52 where one now has to change trains you would have to take this to Saalfeld, that is, a little beyond Probstzelle; you would arrive in S. at 2:20, and we at 2:44, and then we would go together for the short distance that is left. To walk from Probstzelle to the Castle takes 1½ hours, but we can also go by car. Saturday 4 September would suit us best; I would then have four days. (It is safer in these times to make more precise enquiries concerning the train.)
I hope you have more good news about your sons and are in the mood to follow up my suggestion. In the meantime my wife and I greet you both most cordially!
Yours,
Karl Abraham
Will you, dear Herr Professor, please reply to Berlin! If I do not get extra leave, I shall naturally tell you straight away.
1. An inflammation of the pleura with effusion, usually combined with tuberculosis.
282F
Königsee Upper Bavaria1
8 September 1915
Dear Friend,
It is a pity that we had completely lost touch! We have been here for three weeks. Your letter arrived today. Any chance for a meeting is probably over! We2 are going through Munich and Berlin on the way to Hamburg, perhaps on the 13th or 14th. Send me a telegram here if anything can still be done. Good news of sons. Cordially,
Yours,
Freud
1. Postcard.
2. Freud was accompanied to Berlin by his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays.
283A
Allenstein
24 October 1915
Dear Professor,
Not only did we not meet at the beginning of September, as we had hoped, but we have even also lost letter contact for quite some time. Up till a few days ago, I have done practically nothing but hospital work day and night. At last the work has begun to ease off a little. Yesterday afternoon, for the first time, I had a few free hours when I did not have to catch up on sleep, and I finally unearthed my manuscript and wrote a few pages. I tell you this today as a good omen and hope to be able to resume our correspondence as well as my writing.
My wife was especially delighted with your and van Emden's visit, and I, too want to repeat my thanks—although I had already thanked you briefly some time ago. It is over a year since we have seen each other, unfortunately I do not at present see any possibility of arranging a meeting. I hope that you and yours, both at home and at the front, are as well as one could wish! Our news is also good—even my father, at the age of 73, has recovered from his severe attack of pleurisy, though he is still very weak and suffers from the residues.
I hear little from our acquaintances; our correspondence has gradually faded to nothing. I have not received a line from Eitingon and Ferenczi for a long time. Did you know that Stegmann had been killed in action? He was long considered missing in action.
I am very pleased that both journals are continuing. As I mentioned, I hope to be able to send in a contribution soon—about two printed sheets long. I hardly dare say this since I have so often made this promise to you. As soon as I have more leisure, I should also like to contribute something to Imago.
The fact that Sachs remains in Vienna1 and that Rank is also still there, as well as some older members, means that our work has not completely stopped there, as it has here. Rank wrote that you will be having the first meeting of the winter about now2; meanwhile, I must sit here in partibus infidelium,3 and am developing more and more into a surgeon!
I hope to hear from you again soon, dear Herr Professor! You will surely have—as always—lots of news, while I am ashamed to have nothing positive to report as far as scientific work is concerned. However, it may be different from now on.
With cordial greetings to you and all your family,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
29 October
This letter was returned to me because I had sealed it.
1. “Sachs has returned unfit for military duty after ten days' duty” (Freud to Ferenczi, 7 September 1915, Freud & Ferenczi, 1996: p. 78).
2. Minutes missing in Nunberg & Federn, 1975. The German edition, however, in contrast to the American one, contains the attendance lists and the topics for discussions of the meetings from 5 January 1916 to 19 November 1918.
3. See letter 36A, 11 June 1908, n. 4.
284A
Allenstein
13 November 1915
Dear Professor,
Your letter of the 7th1 took only three days to get here; the proofs followed yesterday. Many thanks for both. I am particularly glad that so far your sons have safely and honourably survived all dangers.
I have been able to breathe more freely for the last few days. For the past eight months I had the most exhausting job at this hospital, but I have now left the Surgical Department for good. I am at present organizing an observation ward for psychopathic soldiers and shall probably very shortly be doing only psychiatric and psychotherapeutic work, as has long been my wish. It is likely that I shall have to write a great many reports for the court, but I am sure I shall have time for analytical studies. In these few days, during which I have been busy with about a dozen patients, I have already made some interesting findings about the origin of paralyses in the war-wounded. If things go as I wish, many cases of psychosis should pass through my hands, and I hope the scientific result will prove useful to us.
You are quite right, dear Herr Professor, when you write in your letter of my “awakening”. But while I was working ten hours and more every day, often with disturbed nights as well, and with many other things on my mind, I could do no more than vegetate for months on end. If circumstances permit, then certainly nothing on my part will stand in the way of things being different from now on.
Your short communication2 gave me much pleasure, even though I was familiar with the case. You told me about it in Lehrter station in Berlin in the winter before the war on your way to Hamburg. In future, I shall make a particular point of investigating this and similar questions in the material from my patients.
I am glad to see that our journals keep going, in spite of the difficult times. I hope I shall soon be able to re-enter the ranks of contributors. I have read practically nothing for months, with the exception of your papers.
Is there any chance of your travelling to Berlin or Hamburg again? I very much hope to have a week's leave at Christmas, which is barely enough for Berlin and Bremen. Should I have a little more time, though, a meeting in Breslau, for example, might be arranged, but everything could naturally turn out quite differently.
I have good news from home. My wife is putting up bravely with the long separation; the restrictions imposed by the war are also not easy to bear. But that does not matter. In principle, the war has already been won. The other side just does not want to admit it yet. This is similar to what we see in some difficult cases. But we are used to the fact that these resistances, too, yield in the end.
With cordial greetings, also to your family and the friends in Vienna,
Yours,
Abraham
1. Missing.
2. Freud, 1915f.
285A
Berlin
28 December 1915
Dear Professor,
Contrary to all my expectations, I did get leave, which I am spending partly here and partly in Bremen. I had planned to use the present free time to write to you when I was surprised by the announcement of your son's wedding,1 and now I can begin my letter with my wife's and my heartfelt congratulations to all of you. It is pleasing to be able to congratulate somebody in these times. When you have time, I should be glad to hear how this happened so quickly.—I hope I can assume that your sons at the front are well; how are your sons-in-law?
I can report that I am at last working as a specialist once again. I hope shortly to have a psychiatric department of my own, for the observation of patients about whose mental state there is some doubt, for the treatment of nervous patients, particularly those with hysterical paralyses, and for the observation of epileptics.
My long-promised paper for the Zeitschrift2 is now finished. I only have to add a conclusion and shall send it off to you from Berlin. It will probably amount to two and a half printed sheets. I should like now to make a request. I should very much like the proofs to be corrected there. When I am back at the hospital, there are all sorts of difficulties with the post. As the manuscript is clearly written, it should not be too much trouble. Perhaps Dr Sachs would be so kind as to take it on. (I suppose Rank is no longer there?)3 I should only like to see a proof before the final printing; then the manuscript, of which I have no copy, would not need to travel. In the course of time there have been so many difficulties with shipment that I should be very grateful to have the correcting carried out there!
Our acquaintances are still scattered to the four winds; I hear very little of them.
We are all very well, and I am especially enjoying the children during my short holiday. The little boy in particular has developed very well in my absence, and constantly tries to prove your theories with nice examples. I shall be back in Allenstein—garrison hospital—on 3 January and hope to hear from you there. With best wishes for the New Year to you and all your family and also to the friends there,
Yours,
Karl Abraham
1. Oliver Freud and the medical student Ella Haim were married in Vienna on 19 December 1915. The marriage lasted for only a short time, however; Oliver came to Vienna at the end of May 1916 on account of divorce formalities mandated by the state. The marriage was ritually dissolved on 10 September 1916. (See Hoffer, 1996: pp. xxxi–xxxii.)
2. Abraham, 1916[52].
3. On 6 January 1916, Rank left for Cracow, where for three years he served as editor of the Krakauer Zeitung, the only German daily in Galicia.