Freuds Free Clinics Psychoanalysis and Social Justice

360 Pages·010.977 MB·360\360

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FREUD’S FREE CLINICS
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Freud’s Free Clinics
PSYCHOANALYSIS & SOCIAL JUSTICE, 1918–1938
Elizabeth Ann Danto
We are not the first
Who with best meaning have
incurred the worst.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
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C
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2005 Elizabeth Ann Danto
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Danto, Elizabeth Ann.
Freud’s Free Clinics : psychoanalysis and social justice, 1918–1938 /
Elizabeth Ann Danto
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–231–13180–1 (alk. paper)
1.Psychoanalysis—Europe—History—20th century. I.Title.
BF173.D365 2005
150.19'5'09409041—dc22
2004043141
Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Designed by Lisa Hamm
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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TO PAUL
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
“The Conscience of Society”—Introduction 1
1 1918–1922: Society Awakes
“Treatment will be free”—1918 13
“The polyclinic will be opened in the winter and will grow into a
Ψinstitute”—1919 34
“The position of the polyclinic itself as the headquarters of the
psychoanalytic movement”—1920 52
“An Ambulatorium should exist for psychic treatment in the
widest sense of the word”—1921 81
“A Psychoanalytic Ambulatorium in Vienna”—1922 90
2 1923–1932: The Most Gratifying Years
“This help should be available to the great multitude”—1923 123
“The honor proceeds from the Social Democratic Party”—1924
135
“A warm sympathy for the fate of these unfortunates”—1925 153
“Although absent from the opening of the Clinic, I am all with
you”—1926 167
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“Of special value in the promotion of [psychoanalysis is] the estab-
lishment of Institutes and Outpatient Treatment Clinics”—
1927 183
Freud “knew exactly how things were in the world. But before he
could go outside, he first had to know what was inside”—1928
197
“The very group of patients who need our treatment are without
resources”—1929 208
“Free or low-cost analyses ... [were] at least a small beginning”—
1930 221
“As a social-democratic town councilor, Dr. Friedjung has fur-
thered our interests as psychoanalysts”—1931 231
“Male applicants for treatment [were] regularly more numerous
than female”—1932 240
3 1933–1938: Termination
“The Berlin Psychoanalytic . . . Policlinic . . . came to an end”—
1933 253
“Psychoanalysis [as] the germ of the dialectical-materialist psy-
chology of the future”—1934 265
“A written Children’s Seminar of Marxist psychoanalysis”—1935
274
“Social psychoanalysis”—1936 280
“These were traumatic times and we talked little about them later”
—1937 292
“The fate of psychoanalysis depends on the fate of the world”—
1938 297
Notes 305
Bibliography 333
Index 343
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE PEOPLEand institutions without whom this book would simply not
exist, are a large and generous company. I am deeply thankful.
Dean James Blackburn and President Jennifer Raab have imbued the
Hunter College School of Social Work with a wonderful energy. They,
and the students and faculty, make Hunter and the City University of
New York an exceptional place for teaching and writing.
I am honored to have received research support from the TIAA-CREF
(2004), the DAAD/German Academic Exchange Service (2002), the Eu-
gene Lang Junior Faculty Development Award at Hunter College (2000),
the Hunter College President’s Teaching and Research Incentive Award
(1999), the Rockefeller Archive Center Research Award (1999), and the
American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship for 1998–1999. I thank
Robert Buckley at Hunter College for his brilliant administration of
these awards.
Among the archivists and librarians, the bedrock of this book, I want to
thank Nellie Thompson and Matthew von Unwerth at the A. A. Brill
Archives of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; Sanford
Gifford of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute for the papers
of Helene and Felix Deutsch and Grete and Eduard Bibring; Thomas
Rosenbaum of the Rockefeller Archives Center for assistance with docu-
ments from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Laura Spellman Rockefeller
papers, the Rockefeller Foundation Archives, and the Commonwealth
Fund; Rachel Vigneron for assistance with Otto Fenichel’s Rundbriefein the
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Library at Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts; Marvin Krantz
for access to the Sigmund Freud Archives and the papers of Anna Freud,
Siegfried Bernfeld, Otto Fenichel, and Muriel Gardiner in the Manuscript Col-
lections, Library of Congress, Washington DC; Eckhardt Fuchs of the German
Historical Institute, Washington DC; Stephen Novak for access to Sigmund
Freud’s personal library, Library of the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
Columbia University; also the Otto Rank papers and transcripts of Oral His-
tories of the Psychoanalytic Movement by Bluma Swerdloff in the Rare Book
and Manuscript Collection, Columbia University Libraries; Jerome Kavka of
the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis for the papers of Therese Benedek and
Franz Alexander; Ellen M. Shea for the Edith Banfield Jackson papers at the
Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard Universi-
ty; the New York Historical Society for the NY State Board of Charities
records; Mary Boyd Higgins at the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust; Dianne Spiel-
mann at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City; the Archives of the Sophia
Smith Collection, Smith College School of Social Work, Northampton, Mass.;
Lesley Hall for the Melanie Klein papers at the Wellcome Institute for the His-
tory of Medicine, London; Riccardo Steiner, Polly Rossdale, and the Commit-
tee on Archives at the British Psycho-Analytic Society (London) for the papers
of Ernest Jones; Michael Molnar at the Freud Museum in London; Tom
Roberts of the Sigmund Freud Copyrights/Paterson Marsh Ltd., UK; Robert
Elwall for Ernst Freud’s archives, Royal Institute of British Architects, London;
Winfried Schultze at the Universitätsarchiv of Humboldt University in Berlin;
Inge Scholz-Strasser and Christian Huber at the Archives of the Sigmund
Freud Foundation, Vienna; Helmut Gröger at the Josephineum Institute for
the History of Medicine, Vienna; Gregor Pickro at the Bundesarchive in Kob-
lenz, Germany; Johanna Bleker, Thomas Mueller, and Cornelius Borck at the
Center for the Humanities and Health Sciences, Institute for the History of
Medicine in Berlin; and Philip Swan, Tanya Manvelidze, and Norman Clarius
of the Hunter College Libraries. Many of these kind men and women are also
historians, psychoanalysts, social workers, and physicians, and I thank them for
their unstinting help and insight.
Martin Bergmann, Jean-Luc Donnet, Judith Dupont, Solange Faladé, San-
ford Gifford, Pearl King, Eva Laible, Else Pappenheim, the late George Pol-
lock, the late Helen Schur, Lou T. Seinfeld, Robert Stewart, Bluma Swerdloff,
Mary Weigund, and the late Joseph Wortis all graciously agreed to be record-
ed on tape. Thanks for the memories.
Portions of this book have been presented to meetings of the American As-
sociation for the History of Medicine, the Society for the History of Science,
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