Women healers and physicians: climbing a long hill

The first Frankfurter Psychoanalytisches Institut (see the contribution by Michael Laier) was headed by Karl Landauer and Heinrich Meng; its teachers also included Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Erich Fromm, and Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes. After Berlin (1920), Vienna (1922), and London (1925), it was the fourth such institute to be founded. Unlike its counterparts, however, it did not offer a training course, but aimed at disseminating Freud's theories among "doctors, pedagogues, jurists, sociologists" (p. 51). Due to the influence of Landauer's analysand Max Horkheimer, then director of the Institut fur Sozialforschung at Frankfurt University, the institute had its location on the premises of the university, although it did not form a part of it. In 1933, both institutes were officially closed, because of "psychoanalysis, sociology, Marxism, 'Verjudung', and anti-Hitlerism. The library rooms were demolished, the books publicly burnt" (p. 64). The Sigmund-Freud-Institut was founded against resistance similar to that which had destroyed its predecessor (contributions by Hermann Argelander, Falk Berger, Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, and Emma Moersch). Mitscherlich-whom J H Schulz had told in 1942 that his "resistance against national socialism was an outcome of his latent homosexuality" (pp. 351-2)-encountered great difficulties after the war, particularly because of his efforts to expose the collaboration of doctors with the Nazis. We learn for instance that in 1952 the statutes of the Deutsche Psychoanalytische Vereinigung, headed by Karl Muller-Braunschweig, "saw no obstacle in making members of the NSDAP members of the DPV" (p. 352). The book contains a wealth of information and minute details. A reliable name index further helps to make it a valuable working instrument. English-speaking readers may be particularly interested in the Frankfurt activities of pioneers, such Frieda FrommReichmann (by Ursula Engel), Erich Fromm (by Bernard Gorlich), or Siegmund H Foulkes (by Sabine Rothe), who later played important roles in their countries of exile. There are further biographical accounts of the key figures: Karl Landauer (by Hans-Joachim Rothe) and Heinrich Meng (by Tomas Pliinkers), as well as Ludwig Edinger (by Gerald Kreft), a relative of Bertha Pappenheim, who was probably also her doctor, and whose daughter-in-law Dora Edinger made a name for herself as one of the first Pappenheim biographers; and of Kurt Goldstein (by Michael Laier), a great influence on FrommReichmann, who dedicated her Principles of intensive psychotherapy to Freud, Groddeck, Sullivan, and Goldstein. Tomas Plankers contributes a very interesting paper on the prehistory of the Goethe Prize for Freud, quoting at length from the minutes of the Kuratorium. This book is what it is: a reader on the history of psychoanalysis in Frankfurt. Many of the details are perhaps of little interest or unintelligible to those not directly concerned or to the non-specialist. Some potential readers might find the book's length and the price prohibitive. But those who want to leam more about what the title promises will not be disappointed, although there are some defects. The host of repetitions, understandable in talks given on overlapping topics, is, nevertheless, annoying. A few of the articles are reprints (e.g. by Argelander, Berger, Plankers) which have been printed exactly as they appeared originally-even to the style of quotations, and a reference to an appendix (p. 349) for which one looks in vain in the book.