Feb. 11th. 1921
L.5/Be.4, Bu.4, W.4 (wrongly numbered 3).

Dear Friends:

Berlin: The proposal to translate Kolnai into Hungarian and from this into
English would doubtless produce the best results, but who is to do the second
part of this work? If it is sold to an English publisher he can employ a pro-
fessional German translator, but someone knowing Hungarian well would not be
easy for him to find in London.

I must add to your remarks on Groddeck that I also would have preferred to
see this sort of book, and especially this sort of man, appearing in 
another Verlag than our own. Ps-A has so many attractions for the popular
entertainer that it seems to me better that we official representatives
should lay stress on the dignified and scientific aspects, just those which
our opponents deny in our work. On the other side it is not necessary for me
to dissociate myself from the extreme critics of the book on puritanical 
lines. Pfister wrote this week to Barbara Low expressing the utmost indignation
at its obscenity, etc, and saying that its publication was the severest blow
that Ps-A had suffered for years! It appears that a special meeting of the
Swiss Society was called to denounce the book, which they did unanimously
and in unmeasured language!

I will gladly write to Hesnard, if you will kindly send me an address that

will find him. In your references to the brothers Glover I get confused, not 
knowing which is the elder and which is James; could you please identify 
which worked at the Clinic and which is the newcomer. Miss Turner is cert-
ainly the evil genius of the place and there is no hope till she goes, which 
perhaps will not be long. Dr Herford has been extraordinarily active in fur-
thering her plan to bring you to England. She lives at Reading and has formed 
a committee there for the purpose. A petition has been got up and is to be 
sent to the Home Office to obtain a permit for you; visits have already been 
paid there. She writes and telephones daily to Flügel, and last night he 
brought the matter before our Society. They asked me to write to you a second 
time (I told them of our former correspondence) so as to find out your wishes. 
You may be sure that you would be warmly welcomed here, but on the other points 
of health, lecturing, etc, you have to form your own judgement. But it is
very desirable that you take a definite attitude one way or another in regard 
to Dr Herford’s behaviour, for if you are unwilling to come she is making 
herself ridiculous in everybody’s eyes; on the other hand, if you do then we 
will all of us gladly cooperate with her endeavours. 

Budapest. Your scientific notes interested me greatly. I intend to bring up 
the question of symbolism at our September meeting, with a plan for future 
work.

Wien. Yes, Flügel will be in London till the middle of March at least, after 
which he is going to Geneva for a month or so. I hope he will be able to do 
some propaganda there also.

The Journal of Mental Science (etwa wie Allg. Zeit. f. Psychiatrie) issued

a special number on Ps-A à propos of the discussion they had on the subject 
at their annual meeting last August, and begged me for permission to reprint 
Professor’s first article, with of course full acknowledgements to the J. 
I hope I did right in according this, and enclose the proof of the first page 
including the notice they add to it.

In Essex St, London appears an announcement from The English Psycho- Anal-
ytical Publishing Co to the following effect: "Would you like to earn 1000 pounds 
a year as a psycho-analyst? We can show you how to do it. Take eight postal 
lessons from us at four guineas a course", etc. I do not yet know any fur-
ther details. The question was raised by Rickman at our last meeting whether 
we could not register and incorporate our Society in such a way as to give 
us a patent over the word Ps-A. Bryan was instructed to ascertain the 
legal position.

I have not yet heard that the police have interfered with Unwin, but he 
is carefully restricting the sale of the Tagebuch, and other magazines have 
refused to mention the book in any form. Rank was cross with me for not wan-
ting to publish the book in the Press, but one sees now that my anxiety not 
to compromise our new institution by publishing lay books at the start which 
might lead to public trouble and injury of reputation was quite justified.

I have concluded an agreement with Mitchell which I hope will be satisfact-
ory. He has promised to pirate no more, and not even to abstract anyarticle from

the Z. or Imago until I had first decided whether it was going to be trans-
lated for the J.

Professor. I have had messages from Rank and Hiller that on the one hand you
do not wish to publish the Jenseits in the J. and on the other hand that you
leave the matter to me, so I should be glad to have your opinion and decision.
My own opinion is this. The essay would interest the readers of the J., and
the other editors, whom I consulted, are also definitely of this opinion. We
have ten or twelve books in prospect for the Library series, which can be
got ready as fast as it is possible to print. We have no material for the
J. beyond Nr. 4, not one article, and are now three numbers behind time.
It is very important to get out as many numbers as possible in the next six
months, otherwise we shall be incurring impatience and harm at the hands of
our readers and the advertisers. To publish the Jenseits as a small book in
the Library would delay other books in that series and delay further numbers
of the J. from appearing sooner. On these grounds, therefore, my advice is
unequivocally to publish it in the J. and not in the Library.

Today there came a canting letter from Silberer, talking about the beauty
of truth, and asking that the J. be exchanged for Eros and Psyche. Before
answering it I should like to know your wishes. For my part I should be in-
clined to exchange, so not to introduce further grounds for personal
polemic; I think they would be a little less likely to steal from our J. if
they are on business terms with it.

London. We may now take it as settled, I presume, that the Congress will be
in 1922. As soon as the secretaries have written to Flügel the opinions of
their societies he and I will draw up a formal notice to be sent round to

the various Presidents and for insertion in the journals.

Last night’s meeting here was mainly a business one. Some recent decis-
ions of the General Medical Council make the position of any medical pract-
itioner difficult if he has anything to do with a lay analyst. He can be
expelled from the profession if he “assists in any way an unqualified pract-
itioner on matters requiring professional discretion or skill”, under which
broad heading it would not be difficult to include neuroses, especially if
the deciding body had animus against one. Naturally the same applies to send-
ing patients to an unqualified practitioner.

The sub-editor of the Daily Graphic told a friend of Riggall’s that a lady
doctor had gone to the leading psycho-analyst in England, who raped her in
such a clumsy way that she got septicaemia from her torn hymen and was now
in hospital; on her recovery the facts were going to be made public!! I was
inclined to dismiss the whole story as a pure invention, but it may be con-
nected with the following one. On Sunday a barrister came suddenly to see
me with his sister, and told me that their other sister, a lady doctor, was
being analysed by a lay analyst who claimed to be a pupil of mine; he had
the girl and two others in his house living with him, had seduced two, and
the third, the sister, was on the point of yielding also. The brother wanted
to take legal action and asked me if either I or our Society would do so

instead of him or together with him. The "analyst" announces in his lectures,
though not in print, that he went through a correspondence course in Ps-A
with me, and also that I direct, I suppose also by post, his clinic in Dub-
lin. I did not even know his name, which is Hannegan. Of course I told the
man that we should have nothing else to do if we once began trying to pros-
ecute all the people who call themselves analysts, but that I would gladly
give evidence for him on the subject of what constitutes analysis.

So you see we do not lead a dull life in England! The Press campaign
had died down, but there is an occasional aftermath of flicker now and then.
On Monday is the Lyceum Club dinner, which should be interesting. I hear that
the seats (200) have been applied for three times over, and also that the
head of the Jesuit Community here is going to attack me in public (this
latter is probably, like Mark Twain’s death, somewhat exaggerated). This aft-
ernoon I enjoyed myself immensely at the Committee on the Ethics of Mastur-
bation held by the White Cross League at Westminster, though I found them on
the whole surprisingly receptive. One Catholic maintained that God had arr-
anged to relieve the physical side of his sex by providing him with non-
erotic seminal emissions at night, arising from nightmares! Rank should com-
ment on this in a footnote to the translation of his Weckreiz essay.

Finally, a word to Abraham. You know we shall all fully understand your pos-
ition as regards the business of the Berlin Society, but remember that you
are not allowed to resign without permission from the Committee, which will
be rather hard to obtain! You have been President of a Ps-A society uninterr-
uptedly for longer than anyone in the world, and you know what enormous imp-
ortance we all attach to your remaining in control.

cordially yours
Ernest Jones