Page:Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement.djvu/40



Two years after the first congress the second private congress of psychoanalysts took place at Nuremberg, March, 1910. During the interval, whilst I was still under the impression of the favorable reception in America, the growing hostility in Germany and the unexpected support through the acquisition of the Zürich School, I had conceived a project which I was able to carry out, at this second congress, with the help of my friend S. Ferenczi. I had in mind to organize the psychoanalytic movement, to transfer its center to Zürich, and place it under a head who would take care of its future. As this found much opposition among the adherents of psychoanalysis, I will explain my motives more fully. Thus I hope to justify myself, even if it turns out that my action was not a very wise one.

I judged that the association with Vienna was no recommendation, but rather an obstacle for the new movement. A place like Zürich, in the heart of Europe, where an academic teacher had opened his institution to psychoanalysis, seemed to me much more promising. Moreover, I assumed that my own person was a second obstacle. The estimate put upon my personality was utterly confused by the favor or dislike from different factions. I was either compared to Darwin and Kepler or reviled as a paralytic. I, therefore, desired to push into the background not only the city whence psychoanalysis emanated, but also my own personality. Furthermore, I was no longer young, I saw a long road before me and I felt oppressed by the idea that it had fallen to my lot to become a leader in my advanced age. Yet I felt that there must be a leader. I knew only too well what mistakes lay in wait for him who would undertake the practice of psychoanalysis, and hoped that many of these might be avoided if we had an authority who was prepared to