The White Hotel (3 page)

My own dream
(
the only one I could remember
)
was about some trivial childhood disappointment. Freud of course had absolutely no trouble in guessing that it related to you, my dear. He saw straight to the point: that I fear your decision not to divorce your husband until your daughters are married is a self-deception on your part, and that you do not wish to consummate our long relationship by such a profound tie as marriage. Well, you know my anxieties, and you have done your best to dissipate them, but I could not avoid dreaming of them, you see, during our parting
(
and probably affected by the depressing sea mist
).
Freud helped a good deal, as always. Tell Elma he was touched by her good wishes, and says he is deeply moved that she found her analysis with him so helpful. He also sends you his respects, and said good-humouredly that if the mother equals the daughter in charm and intelligence
(
I assure him you do!
)
I am an enviable man…. I know that! Warmly embrace and kiss Elma from me, and pass on my respects to your husband
.

Next week we are to visit Niagara Falls, which Freud regards as the great event of the whole trip, and we sail on the
Kaiser Wilhelm
less than two weeks from now. So I shall be home in Budapest almost before you receive my letter, and I cannot tell you how I long for your welcoming embrace. Meanwhile I kiss you
(
and heavens! much worse! much better!
)
in my dreams
.

Forever your

Sandor Ferenczi

19 Berggasse
,
Vienna

9 February 1920

Dear Ferenczi
,

Thank you for your letter of condolence. I do not know what more there is to say. For years I was prepared for the loss of my sons, now comes that of my daughter. Since I am profoundly irreligious there is no one I can accuse, and I know there is nowhere to which my complaint could be addressed. “The unvarying circle of a soldier’s duties” and the “sweet habit of existence” will see to it that things go on as before. Blind necessity, mute submission. Quite deep down I can trace the feeling of a deep narcissistic hurt that is not to be healed. My wife and Annerl are terribly shaken in a more human way
.

Do not be concerned about me. I am just the same but for a little more tiredness
. La séance continue.
Today I have had to spend more time than I can spare at the Vienna General Hospital, as part of the Commission investigating the allegations of ill-treatment of war neurotics. It more than ever astonishes me how anyone could think that the administration of electric current to so-called malingerers would turn them into heroes. Inevitably, on returning to the battlefield, they shed their fear of the current in face of the immediate threat: hence, they were subjected to still more severe electric shocks—and so on, pointlessly. I am inclined to give Wagner-Jauregg the benefit of the doubt, but I should not like to vouch for others in his staff. It has never been denied that in German hospitals there were cases of death during the treatment, and suicides as the result of it. It is too early to say whether the Vienna Clinics gave way to the characteristically German inclination to achieve their aims quite ruthlessly. I shall have to submit a Memorandum by the end of the month
.

I have also found myself drawn back to my essay
Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
which had been hanging fire, with a strengthened conviction that I am on the right lines in positing a death instinct, as powerful in its own way
(
though more hidden
)
as the libido. One of my patients, a young woman suffering from a severe hysteria, has just “given birth” to some writings which seem to lend support to my theory: an extreme of libidinous phantasy combined with an extreme of morbidity. It is as if Venus looked in her mirror and saw the face of Medusa. It may be that we have studied the sexual impulses too exclusively, and that we are in the position of a mariner whose gaze is so concentrated on the lighthouse that he runs on to the rocks in the engulfing darkness
.

Perhaps I may have a paper on some aspect of this theme to present to the Congress in September. I am sure the reunion will hearten us all, after these terrible and dispiriting years. I have heard that Abraham intends to read a paper on the Female Castration Complex. Your suggestions on the development of an Active Therapy in Psychoanalysis seem admirable as a subject for discussion. I remain to be convinced that “one could effect far more with one’s patients if one gave them enough of the love which they had longed for as children,” but I shall attend to your arguments with great interest
.

My wife joins me in thanking you for your kind thoughts
.

Yours
,

Freud

19 Berggasse
,
Vienna

4 March 1920

Dear Sachs
,

Greatly though your colleagues will miss you in Switzerland, I think you are absolutely right to go to Berlin. Berlin will become the centre of our movement in a few years, of that I have no doubts. Your intelligence, buoyant optimism, geniality and breadth of culture, make you an ideal person to undertake the training of future analysis, despite your anxiety over your lack of clinical experience. I have the greatest confidence in you
.

I take the liberty of sending you, as a “parting gift”—though I trust the parting will not be for long—a somewhat extraordinary “journal” which one of my patients, a young woman of most respectable character, has “given birth” to, after taking the waters at Gastein. She left Vienna thin, and returned plump, and straightway delivered her writings to me. A genuine
pseudocyesis!
She was in the company of her aunt on holiday, and I need hardly add that she has never met any of my sons, though I may have mentioned to her that Martin was a prisoner of war. I shall not bore you with the details of her case, but if anything strikes the
artist
in you, I shall be grateful for your observations. The young woman has had a promising musical career interrupted, and actually wrote the “verses” between the staves of a score of
Don Giovanni….
This is, of course, a copy of the whole manuscript
(
the rest was originally in a child’s exercise book
),
which she has been only too pleased to make for me. The copy is, you might say, the afterbirth, and you do not need to send it back
.

If you can look beyond the gross expressions which her illness has dredged up from this normally shy and prudish girl, you may find passages to enjoy. I speak as one who knows your Rabelaisian temperament. Don’t worry, my friend, it does not offend me! I shall miss your Jewish jokes—they are a terribly sober crowd here in Vienna, as you know
.

I shall hope to see you at The Hague in September, if not before. Abraham promises a paper on the Female Castration Complex. Doubtless he will wield a very blunt knife. Still, he is sound and decent. Ferenczi will be trying to justify his new-found enthusiasm for kissing his patients
.

Our house still feels empty without our “Sunday child,” even though we had seen little of her since her marriage. But enough of that
.

With cordial greetings
,

Yours
,

Freud

From the Berlin Polyclinic

14 March 1920

Dear and esteemed Professor
,

Forgive the postcard: I thought it appropriate in the light of your young patient’s “white hotel,” for which gift please accept my thanks! It passed the train journey
(
again most apt
)
speedily and interestingly. My thoughts on it are, I fear, elementary, her phantasy strikes me as like Eden before the Fall—not that love and death did not happen there, but there was no
time
in which they could have a meaning. The new clinic is splendid, not, alas, flowing in milk and honey like the
white hotel,
but considerably more durable, I hope! Letter follows when I have sorted myself out
.

Cordially yours
,
Sachs

19 Berggasse
,
Vienna

18 May 1931