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"Freud's Russia" by James L. Rice
(Transaction Publishers, 1993)
(page 73-74) |
<<Jung's Zurich
had long been a preferred base for Russian students, many of them
dissidents or sometime revolutionaries. In the immediate period that
concerns us, at least five medical students from Russia participated
in Jung's psychoanalytic discussion group, each of whom later made
professional contributions to the movement. These included Fanny
Chalewsky from Rostov-on-the-Don, who earned her M.D. in Zurich in
1907; Esther Aptekmann, who earned her M.D. in 1911; Tatiana
Rosenthal, who was a student from 1901 to 1905 and from 1906 to 1911
and who earned her M.D. in 1911; Sabina Spielrein, also of
Rostov-on-the-Don, who was a student from 1905 to 1911 and earned
her M.D. in 1911; and Max Eitingon, who earned his M.D. in 1909. All
were Jewish, an ethnic identity that played an important part in
Jung's personal relationships with them and with Freud. Of their
political orientations during these student years little can be said
with certainty, though it is significant that Rosenthal interrupted
hr studies to participate in the 1905 Revolution and returned
permanently to Russia in 1911. Aptekmann and Spielrein returned in
1923. Rosenthal committed suicide in 1921, and the following year a
detailed account of her life was published in the International
Journal of Psycho-Analysis. The profile of her youthful radical
idealism is no doubt typical of many young revolutionaries:
... full of enthusiasm for social
amelioration... joined the social democratic party ... studies
interrupted several times by her zeal for the revolutionary
agitation in Russia ... in 1906 returned to Zurich weary and
dispirited, wavering between medicine and law... by accident came
across Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and was full of
enthusiasm, foreseeing a new horizon for psychology along the path
of self-revelation to which Freud points the way... She exclaimed: "What
a harmony we might have with the combination of Freud and Marx!"1
Such views, though not
universal among Jung's Russian students, certainly had a prominent
currency and contributed to the national stereotype, notably the
combined enthusiasm for revolution and utopian idealism, and the
ideological counterpoise of destruction and renewal. It may be added
that Tatiana Rosenthal's discovery of psychoanalysis was probably
not by accident, because Jung's contact with Freud also dates from
early 1906.>>
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(page 142) << One further
publication may be cited here as a possible stimulus to Freud's views at
just that moment. Dr. Tatiana Rosenthal, a student of Jung's, had
returned to Russia in 1911. At first driven by political and medical
idealism, she became chief clinician at Betcherev's new Brain Pathology
Institute in Petrograd. Toward the end of 1920 a report of her work was
relayed by Freud's Berlin colleagues (Max Eitingon and Sara Neiditsch)
to the Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse. Among other
things, it included a synopsis of her unfinished essay "The Suffering
and Creativity of Dostoevsky - A Psychogenic Study", published a year
earlier in a Soviet periodical. Just in time to be included with this
account in Freud's journal, a death notice was also received in Vienna:
Tatiana Rosenthal, one of the very few didactic analysts in the Soviet
medical establishment, an esteemed member of her profession, and the
mother of a gifted child, had committed suicide at the age of thirty-six.
Her obituary appeared in the Zeitschrift just below the detailed
review of her work on Dostoevsky.
Rosenthal, like many Russian of the
revolutionary era, was attracted to the views
of Adler, advocate of a social and
rational medicine, who had parted with Freud in 1911. Once the
psychiatrist of Trotsky's righthand man Joffe, by 1918 Adler had already
spoken out against the violence of the Bolsheviks, correctly predicting
a European reaction. In 1920, by the way, Adler also published a lecture
(delivered in 1918 in Switzerland) on Dostoevsky. It is rather bland,
certainly was not seen by Rosenthal, and was rightly ignored by Freud.
No doubt Freud would have said of Adler, as a decade before he had joked
about the Russians, that he had "some utopian dream of a
world-benefiting therapy" and wanted the work to go faster. Many Russian
clinicians of 1920 clung tenaciously, or grimly, to some utopian dream.
The dream did not heal Dr. Rosenthal. The resumé of her article on
Dostoevsky, which carries his career only to his arrest in 1849 but was
to have been continued, concludes by quoting her directly:
We shall see that the basic tone
of [Dostoevsky's] creativity remained unaltered: it is a feeling of
self-abasement, and rebellion against this feeling, which intensifies
into a diametrically opposite feeling of his own elect predestination [Auserwaehltheit].
Tha latter is accompanied by an aggressive tendency. (Adler)
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(follows at pages 143 and 144) |
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"Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud
and Karl Abraham, 1907-1925"
edited by Ernst Falzeder (Karnac Books, 2002) |
pagg. XX-XXI
<< The
Burgholzli quickly attracted a large number of young physicians
and psychiatrists as interns or members of staff. In the German-speaking
countries, the only clinic and the name rivalling that of Bleuler and
the Burgholzli was that of Kraepelin in Munich, but Kraepelin's
classifying approach to psychiatry was clearly losing out among the
younger generation to the dynamic views endorsed by those at the
Burgholzli. In short, for any ambitious, open-minded young psychiatrist,
the Burgholzli was the place to go. Indeed, Zurich - that liberal,
metropolitan city, then also Albert Einstein's refuge - became one of
the main recruiting centres for the nascent psychoanalytic movement.
Most among the first generation of those who practised psychoanalysis as
a profession came to Freud via Jung and Bleuler - among them Roberto
Greco Assagioli, Ludwig Binswanger,Trigant Burrow, Abraham Arden Brill,
Charles Macfie Campbell, Imre Décsi, Max Eitingon, Sàndor Ferenczi,
Johann Jakob Honegger, Smith Ely Jelliffe, Ernest Jones, Alphonse Maeder,
Herman Nunberg, Johan H. W. van Ophuijsen, Nikolai J. Ossipow, Franz
Riklin, Hermann Rorschach, Tatiana Rosenthal, Leonhard Seif, Eugenie
Sokolnicka, Sabina Spielrein, Philipp Stein, Wolf stockmayer, Johannes
Irgens Stromme, Jaroslaw Stuchlìk, G. Alexander Young - and Karl
Abraham.>>
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1911
99A
Berlin W.
11 January 1911
Dear Professor,
Segantini is finished and is coming to you
as soon as it has been copied.
Many thanks for your letter. I am glad that
the Schriften zur angerwandten Seelenkunde are succeeding each
other so rapidly. Today I have to ask you something related to them.
In the last session of our local group, a
Russian doctor, Frl. Dr.
Rosenthal,
who had already been our guest on several occasions, gave a talk:"Psychoanalytical
Remarks on Karin Michaelis's 'The Dangerous Age'".6 The
lecture was - particularly for a beginner who was in Zurich for a short
time and had a little more experience with me - quite outstanding and
really deserves to be published. The question is, where.
According to the calculations of the authoress, two to three printed
sheets could come out. As the subject is topical, it would be desirable
for it to appear soon. I thought I might do it like this: I will go
through the work in detail with Frl. Dr. R., then send it to you and ask
your opinion as to whether the paper is suitable for the Sammlung [Schriften]
(and whether we would have to wait not too long for publication).
Otherwise I would ask you to hand the manuscript on to the
Zentralblatt. Do you agree with this?
(...)
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(Letter
of Karl Abraham to Sigmund Freud) |
pag. 125 -126 100F
Berggasse 19
20 January 1911
<<Dear Friend,
A ridiculously hectic period, complicated by
an accident of my eldest, who broke a thigh skiing (not a complicated
fracture, fortunately taking a normal course), has meant that the reply
to your letter has had to be put off for such a long time. I scarcely
know now with what I should catch up.
I believe I know Frl. Rosenthal from a brief
correspondence with her. If you send me the work, I will read it at once
and then make a decision about it. Your Segantini is most welcome. Its
position is as follows: The translation of Jones's Hamlet is to appear
very soon, followed two months later by a paper on parricide by a Zurich
doctor of laws, and then comes your Segantini's turn. I cannot expect
Deuticke to accept more than five or six volumes a year.
Dr Bjerre was in Vienna for a week and at
first made things difficult for me by his taciturnity and stiffness, but
finally I worked my way through to discovering his serious personality
and good mind. I advised him to join the Berlin group as a member, and I
hope he will do so. Scandinavia is, after all, your natural hinterland.
(...)>>
101A
Berlin
11 February 1911
Dear Professor,
The Segantini manuscript goes off to you
together with these lines. I send it to you with a request for your
criticsm that seems particularly necessary to me this time, as it is a
piece of work with some personal complexes behind it. Besides, I would
like to have your opinion about a question of layout: Would it be useful
to include some of the main pictures, since they are not as generally
known as some of the works of Bocklin and other modern painters? I would
suggest one of the pictures pertaining to the mother-complex and one of
the mystical ones (the wicked mothers). If you are in favour of
illustrations, would you kindly discuss this with the publisher?
We had the pleasure of seeing Frl. Bernays
twice in our home. I heard from her in more detail about the doings of
you and your family. I hope that your patient is as well as one can be
after so unpleasant an injury.
You will soon be receiving Frl. Dr.
Rosenthal's paper; I have spoken to her, and she is in perfect agreement
with its publication in the Zentralblatt, as the Schriften
are probably too full up for the time being. So you could perhaps save
yourself the trouble of reading it and pass the manuscript on direct to
Stekel or Adler. Or I could send it direct. Our group is doing
splendidly. The day before yesterday Stegmann spoke on asthma, and I
spoke about a case of obsessional neurosis. Interest is constant. Next
time Koerber is speaking on narcissism. (...)>>
About Tatiana Rosenthal Abraham wrote in a following letter
to Freud:
103
Berlin
17 February 1911
Dear Professor,
Many thanks for the letter and the cards.
Your information about Fliess was very welcome. I will get in contact
with him and exercise the necessary caution.
I got the story about Ziehen recently from
our colleague Maier from Zurich, who was here, visited the clinic, and
told the story at our session in the evening. As I was not an
ear-witness, I cannot vouch for the wording. I will ask Maier about it
once again in writing, and then there will be no more obstacles to its
publication.
I see, incidentally, that we have recently
taken a somewhat different stand vis-à-vis our opponents. Your "Wild
Psychoanalysis", then Bleuler's defence, Jung's remarks to Mendel - this
means a step forward out of reserve. If only it carries on with such
caution, t will help rather than harm.
I had a great deal of trouble
translating Dr Rosenthal's manuscript into readable German (she is
Russian). It will probably be ready in a few days. I myself now believe
that it is best suited for the Centalblatt.
Did you read that Segantini's son Mario was
arrested in Berlin for fraud? Another deserted from the Army a few years
ago and then shot himself. The third is an idler. Only the daughter
seems to be worth anything. It is remarkable that the sons completely
lack the father's capacity for sublimation.
With cordial greetings from house to house,
Yours,
Abraham
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(Letter from Freud to
Abraham and the following reply by Abraham) |
"100 Years of
Psychoanalysis: Contributions to the History of Psychoanalysis" by A.
Haynal (ed.)( Karnac Books) |
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page 182 |
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<<(...) When Ernest Jones
complained about the poor results of psychoanalysis among analysts
themselves, and promoted "what may be called post-graduate analysis",
i.e. the idea that analysts "must continue their analysis from time to
time later on" (18 Sept. 1933; Freud & Jones, 1993, p. 729), Freud was
eager to assert that this was in fact his own idea:"For years I have
been advocating your idea of a 'Postgraduate Analysis', and am also
trying to put it into effect. I find such supplementary analyses
unexpectedly interesting and helpful. Therefore, in this instance I am
stressing my priority!" (15 Oct. 1933; Freud & Jones, 1993, p. 731). His
final conclusion is found in print in Analysis terminable and
interminable (Freud, 1937c), where he first confirmed the necessity
of a training analysis -although he thought that "for practical reasons
this analysis can only be short and incomplete" (ibid., p. 248)-, and
secondly that "[e]very analyst should periodically - at intervals of
five years or so - submit himself to analysis once more, without feeling
ashamed of taking this step" (ibid., p. 249).
In fact, many, if not most analysts seem to
have acted according to Freud's advice, but with one remarkable
restriction: instead of considering this a standard part of their
professional training, this whole area is treated either with shame or
with curious pride. Are there other reasons for these postgraduate
analyses?
Apart from the necessity to counteract the "déformation
professionnelle", there is ample evidence that psychoanalysts seem
not only to have had the same problems other human beings have, which
would surprise nobody, but indeed had more than their share, and that
many of them remained unhappy, not helped by their personal analyses. In
fact, a great number of the early psychoanalysts committed suicide: of
the 149 persons who were members of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society
between 1902 and 1938, at least nine killed themselves (Paul Federn, Max
Kahane, Tatiana Rosenthal, Herbert Silberer, Eugénie Sokolnicka, Wilhelm
Stekel, Victor Tausk, and Rosa Walk), that is, six percent or one out of
seventeen (Muhlleitner, 1992). When Jakob Honegger, a former assistant
of Jung's, with whom Jung had had some sort of mutual analysis,
committed suicide, Freud remarked dryly:"Do you know, I think we wear
out quite a few men" (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 413). In addition, a good
number of them had drug or alcohol problems (Ruth Mack Brunswick, Otto
Gross, Walter Schmideberg ...).>>.
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