Berlin - Tegel

Schlosssanatorium
Oct 8^th 1929

Dear Brill

I am still here with Anna,
waiting for a thorough correction of my
mischievous plate; no good result hitherto.

I enjoyed your letter as much as your
visit at Schneewinkl. I can only say
again: Why did you not come before?
Has not the factor been at play, which
the poet Wassermann calls „Trägheit
des Herzens“? You know I have always
been fond of you and at the same time
nagging at you, a peculiar form of
emotional transference. I too feel, all
is changed between ourselves since
you have come.

As regards the Interpretation of Dreams
you will have the proofs as soon as I
get them. I am glad to hear of the
revised edition. But mark, it will
take much time before you get
them, as I did not yet touch the work
and am not likely to approach it in
the next months, being busy in tiding
up my new little book which is called
„Das Unbehagen in der Kultur“. I
ought not to say, I am busy on it,
for I am slow in working now and
struggle against a resistance telling
me it would be better, not to work
at all. Truly, old age is hard to bear,
any one dying in youth should be envied.

No doubt there is a continuous growth of interest
for psychoanalysis in America as everywhere,
not all the results of it satisfactory. The
intrusion of Adler – into Columbia is no matter
of surprise. The Americans like to cover
up their lack of judgment by the pre-
sumption of broad-mindedness, any
bit of shallow doctrine will have its run
with them – for a certain time, if only
to make room for the next truism or
banality, while analysis is hard to accept
and if accepted can no more be dropped.

Of the man Maylan, who excelled in
writing on my tragic conflict I only
know he went into analysis at Berlin
and was sent away as a queer, abnormal
customer unfitted for our work. The book
is his personal revenge. By several passages
you may find him out to be a stout
Antisemite and fanatical follower of
the theory of Race-Superiority. I got two
crazy letters from him, where reverence
is mixed with insolence in a most
curious way. I gave no answer, but when
he applied to Eitingon, I made E. recall
to him a certain saying of Caliban
in the „tempest“, which runs (I have no
English Shakespeare at hand) as follows: You
taught me speech and now I use it to
curse you. Of course I had to turn „curse
you” into „defile you“.

Hoping you will let me hear more
of you in time
affectionately yours
Freud