23 March 1922  Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear Jones

«IP4,0»You have lately developed the habit of joining a private letter to the Rundbrief and I hope you will cling to it.  It is so very convenient.

I am sorry I did not answer your last but one.  Sometimes my (fountain‑) pen gets weary.  I have so much business correspondence to do, mostly warning patients not to come as I have not the time to treat them and declining flattering offers to write a paper on such a subject for such a periodical.  These are the drawbacks of popularity, I see not much of its blessings.

Now as regards the change or amplification of your name I feel intensely incompetent to give a judgment on the matter.  I only know that you will continue to be Dr. Ernest Jones to us.  What the effect with strangers may be I cannot imagine.  Perhaps it will be similar as if I had tried to avoid the ambiguity of the term "sexual" and employed a new word, say: "hiero‑aphroditic" instead.  Every reader would have put the question: Now what the deuce does he mean by that new Greek composition, I have never heard of it, ‑‑ oh it means something like sexual, I see.  So people will ask: Who is that Beddow Jones?  I am not likely to confound him with half a million of other Jones', but I know nothing of him.  Oh, it is the author of the papers on Psychoanalysis and president of the Inter. | / Association.  Now I know, it is a pity he did not introduce himself by this name from the very beginning.  Now perhaps he did not need it.

Forsyth's little book is exceptionally good and full of sound judgment.  I acknowledged it in a card to him.

Mrs. Riviere does not appear to me half as black as you had painted her.  We agree quite nicely so far.  May be the difficulties will come later.  In my experience you have not to scratch too deeply the skin of a so‑called masculine woman to bring her feminity to the light.  I am very glad you had no sexual relations with her as your hints made me suspect.  To be sure it was a technical error to befriend her before her analysis was brought to a close.  No doubt she is very clever and clear‑headed.

The Verlag has at last found an abode and I trust it will do good work.  I am not so well satisfied by the Press.  The sphinx in our coat of arms could be supplemented by a snail to give account of the rate of acceleration in its progress.  Maybe its mechanism is too complex, I do not see where the fault lies.  As we depend for our subsistence on the sale of the English products we throw on the market ‑‑ the Verlag cannot pay ‑‑ it is rather a serious affair.  Yesterday I got the first two volumes of the «MDUL»Journal«MDNM» in exquisite, nay gorgeous, leather‑binding.  The contents do not correspond to the cover.  My wish is that these offsprings of the Anglo‑Viennese alliance shall thrive as do the other two you raise in your house.

                          Affectionately yours  Freud