Individual and Collective Influences of Psychoanalytical History

Review of Peter Loewenberg and Nellie L. Thompson, editors, 100 Years of the IPA: The Centenary History of the International Psychoanalytical Association 1910-2010: Evolution and Change, (London: International Psychoanalytical Association, 2011), ISBN978-1-905888-16-0, 560 pages, softcover, $75.

This large book marks the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) at the Nuremburg Congress in 1910. It took four years of work by the editors, Peter Loewenberg and Nellie Thompson, eminent historians and psychoanalysts, to gather material from 56 contributors from

41 countries. The book is organized geographically—Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Oceania—with additional chapters on the history of training standards, new societies, and summaries by the last six presidents of their terms in office.

Rather than being either dry or self-congratulatory, this volume presents a fascinating and frank panorama of successes and failures in establishing and maintaining psychoanalytic societies and training centers from Vienna to Calcutta, and from Buenos Aires to Taipei. These historical accounts offer a treasure trove of possibilities for psychohistorical investigation.

Taken as a whole, this volume constitutes an account of the progressive institutionalization of a social movement. What began as a small group of Jewish medical men meeting in Freud’s apartment in Vienna became a worldwide organization with over 10,000 current adherents, of which I am a member. The different accounts demonstrate the group process within the analytic societies (authoritarian leadership, secret committees, ideological battles, coups, splits, lots of splits), the group process between the societies and the growing IPA institutional structure (regional control, lay analysis, training models, language conflicts), and the group process in the IPA itself (leadership, central control, dismissal of heretics, political structure). However much psychoanalysis purports to

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be a science and a treatment for human suffering, in its institutional form it has been prey to all of the ills that beset a social movement. This volume provides a surprisingly candid, open, and thorough account.

Let me cite an example that psychohistorians might address. The relationship between psychoanalysis and the political structure of the countries in which its practitioners reside comes through very clearly. This has been underappreciated by psychoanalysts and historians. For example, psychoanalysis and totalitarianism are incompatible and, in fact, totalitarians attempt to destroy psychoanalysis when and where they can. The 100-year history of the IPA is riddled with the consequences of World War II and the Holocaust. The effect of scattering psychoanalysts around the world had a deleterious effect on psychoanalysis in Europe but had the effect of strengthening psychoanalysis in North America and spreading psychoanalysis to far-flung corners, especially South America. What is also less well-known in North America is the effect of totalitarian regimes in places like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and currently Venezuela on both psychoanalytic training and practice. Anti-Semitism may play a part in this, but seems an insufficient explanation in many of these cases. By contrast, the political structure in Switzerland and in Uruguay currently has significantly influenced how psychoanalysis is organized in these countries along democratic lines. The efforts to bring psychoanalysis to China may prove to be an interesting place to explore this issue as well.

I was further struck while reading this volume by just how personal political and ideological conflicts can be. The account of the British Psychoanalytical Society gave a frank and interesting rendition of the conflict between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein that led to the “controversial discussions” during World War II and an uneasy truce between these two factions, with Anna Freud retreating to her Hempstead Clinic. However, later she wished to have her clinic recognized by the IPA as a separate society to train adult and child psychoanalysts. This led to another battle and compromise with the IPA that was in many ways unsatisfactory and hurtful to Anna Freud. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl revealed these private feelings in an excellent biography. In published letters, Anna Freud spoke very disparagingly about the IPA President Leo

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Rangell from Los Angeles. In a fascinating development, Rangell gives his side of the story in his chapter on his IPA presidency. He alludes to the fact that Anna Freud was very friendly with Ralph Greenson, another Los Angeles analyst who helped arrange funding for the Hempstead Clinic, and with whom Rangell was in a bitter personal feud that Rangell dubbed a “local rivalry.” Now that’s personal, but it may well have affected political proceedings in the IPA at the highest levels.

Another theme that is demonstrated by the accounts in this book is the tremendous effort that societies have expended to become members of the IPA. The same is true for individuals who have endured war, persecution, geographical dislocation, financial hardship, and other miseries to obtain psychoanalytic training to become credentialed psychoanalysts. This is a remarkable part of the history as well.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis, in the development of social movements, in the relation between the personal and the political, in the group process in and between institutions, and in the relation between psychoanalysis and its social and political context. To those interested in applying psychohistory to the psychoanalytic movement, this book will prove to be a very valuable reference.

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