The events of World War I form a somber canvas for the exchanges in Volume 2 (July 1914 through December 1919). Uncertainty pervades the letters: Will Ferenczi be called up? Will food, fuel, and cigar shortages continue? Will Freud's enlisted sons and son-in-law come through the war intact? And will Freud's "problem-child," psychoanalysis, survive?
At the same time, a more intimate drama is unfolding: Freud's three-part analysis of Ferenczi in 1914 and 1916 ("finished but not terminated"); Ferenczi's concomitant turmoil over whether to marry his mistress, Gizella Pá los, or her daughter, Elma; and the refraction of all these relationships in constantly shifting triads and dyads. In these, as in other matters, both men display characteristic contradictions and inconsistencies, Freud restrained, Ferenczi more effusive and revealing. Freud, for example, unswervingly favors Ferenczi's marriage to Gizella and views his indecision as "resistance"; yet several years later, commenting on Otto Rank's wife, Freud remarks, "One certainly can't judge in these matters...on behalf of another." Ferenczi, for his part, reacts to the paternal authority of the "father of psychoanalysis" as an alternately obedient and rebellious son.< P>
