53 St. Marks Ave. Brooklyn N.Y. City

June 22, 1908.

Prof Sigmund Freud.

My dear Professor.

Knowing how busy you are I did not like to trouble you with unnecessary correspondence, but thinking that it might interest you to know how far your ideas have penetrated on this side of the ocean I take the liberty to address you.  Since my return to the city I took pains to find out how far your works have advanced in New York and the attitude adopted towards them.  Just as in Europe the awaking is only at its starting

point but I am glad to say that so far everything is very favorable.  Of course there are but few who know your works but the men who do are certainly with you  They all however have slight objections when it comes to the sexual theory but I am quite convinced that in time this will also disappear.  Most of the objections are due to ignorance; thus e.g. Dr. Peterson remarked to me that he is unable to find the sexual in the dream and added "Freud finds it because he draws his material from Vienna."  I then related to him three dreams that I analyzed recently for three elderly Americans where the sexual was quite plainly visible.  He was very much pleased and surprised.  I took particular care in the analysis to avoid all suggestion, the word "coffin" in the first dream of a man 60 yrs old, very smoothly went to "box", ["]woman's box", and the whole dream was nothing but of the erotic.  In the second dream the word Liverpool was divided into liver and pool -- livery pool -- something congealed -- human sperma --.  The dream was a wish realization of an old impotent man.  Both gentlemen were of the puritan type, church members etc. but when I analyzed the dreams and told them what it meant, they cheerfully admitted everything and showed

the greatest astonishment.  Both dreams are most interesting.

The enclosed clippings will give you an idea how things are looked upon.  This discussion took place in Jan. 07 at the N.Y. Neurological Soc. but it was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental diseases of this month - June - I know all these men personally.  Dr. C. as you will see has very queer ideas and he is still in his "cathartic" age.  Dr. Bailey is the chief of the neurol. clinic of Columbia University N.Y.C.  I am not settled about my future work, at present I am working on the translations.

I again take the opportunity to thank you for the kind treatment that I received from you while in Vienna and if there is anything that I can do for you please command me. 

Cordially Yours
A Brill

Kindest regards to your family.