October 15, 1922.

Dear Friends:

My first pleasant duty on resuming our correspondence is to send my warmest personal  
thanks to our Berlin friends, not only for all their arduous and successful  
labours in connection with the Congress, but also especially for their unceasing  
kindness. Thanks to that, the days in Berlin will always be a happy memory to me and  
doubtless to the other visitors. From what I have heard from various members I think  
we may congratulate ourselves on a successful Congress.

Then I wish to return my best thanks to the members of the Committee for the con-  
fidence they have shewn in me by re-electing me to the presidency. It was a happy idea  
of Professor’s to unite Abraham and myself in the official activities of the Associat-  
ion and I am sure we shall both enjoy working together. Which leads me at once into a  
business question: the editing of the Correspondenzblatt, one of the official duties  
of the Central Executive. Experience has shewn how important it is for one person to  
be entirely responsible for this, otherwise there arises the greatest lack of  
uniformity in the different Society Reports, size, style, and especially date. There  
must be fixed dates (4 times a year), and the various secretaries have to be kept up  
to the mark regularly. They are supposed to send in two copies (in either German or  
English) and, after they have been editorially corrected, one is translated. I should  
be very grateful if Abraham could take over this work, for I really have more than  
enough to do, and we should then know that it was efficiently done. But if he feels  
he is too busy, then I will take it on. I hear that on the morning after the Congress  
a meeting of all the secretaries was held to discuss this very matter, but no one who
 

knew about the matter was present, neither Flügel (who arranged the meeting and has  
hitherto been Editor), nor myself (who knew nothing about it), Rank, Hiller, or Mrs  
Rivière. If Abraham agrees, I think he should treat their decisions as void and send  
his own instructions to the various secretaries.  

Still with the Congress in my mind I think it is at last high time that the Statuten  
be properly printed in booklet form, as we have already done in English, and I would  
suggest that Rank gets this done in the Verlag. The way in which the Statutes were  
violated at the Congress has called forth much criticism, and we should either have  
none at all, which is impossible, or else take them seriously.  

After our free talk on the relations between Verlag and Press it is to be hoped  
that better progress will be made, for there is no reason why it shouldn’t. The meet-  
ing was tantamount to a special vote of confidence in Rank in his position as  
Managing Director, and although there was not the least need for the vote I hope that  
Rank will now feel more at ease in the matter. The two specific proposals he made  
I not only accepted unreservedly, but may even claim the authorship of them. Although  
I have nothing to do with the financial details of either Verlag and Press I always  
regarded the resources of both as common property, and thought that after Hiller went  
to Vienna the mutual book-keeping was much more intimate than it appears to be: Rank  
can of course alter this and institute any system he wishes. The other point, the re-  
lieving Hiller of the business relations with tradespeople, I have urged for over a  
year, for I have been consistently of opinion that here lies the real reason for the  
delay in the Press production of books (and not the other reasons that have wrongly  
been put forward); I am only glad that at last Rank has agreed to act on this view.  

I have asked Hiller to print some new Association paper, which will be sent  
around as soon as it is ready.  

Practice is bad here, only one applicant since July, although September and October  
are usually good months. There are signs of a rising storm in the form of  
another campaign against Psa, on the part of the Press, Church, and Medical Profession.
 

The Press is very incensed over our exclusion of them from the Congress, and the Times  
refused to print a letter I sent them (via Bryan) contradicting their false state-  
ments. Sir Clifford Allbutt, Professor of Medicine at Cambridge, has issued an appeal to  
the medical profession to boycott us, and he is extensively supported. I have sent, also  
via Bryan, a letter to the British Medical Journal, but I doubt if they will print it.  

I wrote officially to Bose, saying that the Indian group had been accepted at  
the Congress, and intimating that Professor Freud was probably going to invite him to  
act as Assistant Editor to the Zeitschrift and Journal. I hope this is in order.  

For the first time in my experience I have seen a criticism of Psa with some intell-  
igent point in it. Dr James Suttie (the husband of Ferenczi’s translator) has sent me  
an article for the Journal dealing with the biological objections to our view of  
mental recapitulation (relation between ontogeny and phylogeny). Unfortunately it is  
not written clearly enough (for the non-biological reader) to publish as it stands, and  
I am communicating with him on this aspect, but there is little doubt in my opinion  
that our views need to be formulated with more exact reference to modern biology. Who  
is there among us who could take up the matter properly? Perhaps one of the bright  
young men in Berlin or Budapest? I have felt uneasy about the matter for some time,  
having heard that modern biologists reject, not only Haeckelism, but any idea of a  
causal connection between ontogenetic and phylogenetic common phenomena.  

Rank. In reply to your letter, my wife is willing to translate my Vortrag if you wish  
it for the Z or Imago.  

With cordial wishes for the coming session to all,  
Ernest Jones.