VOLUME 18 NO.6 JUNE 2018 JOURNAL The Association of Jewish Refugees Freud in Exile REACHING HEARTS & MINDS On 6 June 1938, exactly eighty years ago, Sigmund Freud, with his wife, Martha, and daughter, Anna, arrived in London. Summer is truly here and the Royal Wedding has not been the only thing He was the most famous refugee from post-Anschluss Vienna to touch our hearts. Lots of meaningful and was lucky to get out. His escape was the result of intense events and activities are covered in this issue, including a very evocative report diplomatic activity. The American Consul in Vienna, the US about the recent March of the Living, State Department and the American Ambassador in Berlin were written by one of the AJR’s own staff. all involved. While waiting for the crucial visas that would Meanwhile the AJR’s letters bag has been enable him to leave Vienna, Freud wrote to his son Ernst in full to bursting. Many people directly responded to other letters and articles London, expressing his wish “to die in freedom.” His wish was that appeared in recent issues of our granted, though three sisters were later to die in the camps. Journal. We welcome all feedback and have tried to reflect our members’ wide- ranging opinions within these pages. Please join us in sending a hearty mazeltov to the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Buchenwald reflections ................................ 3 Cellist in the Reichstag ................................. 4 Letter from Israel .......................................... 5 Letters to the Editor ................................6 & 7 Art Notes...................................................... 8 At your service: AJR Trustees ........................ 9 Abortion – a perspective ............................ 10 Yom Hashoah reports ................................. 11 Reviews ...................................................... 12 Belsize connections ..................................... 13 Around the AJR .......................................... 14 Looking for................................................. 15 March of the Living ............................16 & 17 Obituaries .................................................. 18 Adverts ....................................................... 19 Events & exhibitions ................................... 20 AJR Team Sigmund Freud Chief Executive Michael Newman Finance Director David Kaye Freud was not the first leading Freud’s flight stood for two other Heads of Department psychoanalyst to seek refuge in significant moments in 20th century HR & Administration Karen Markham London but his arrival was a hugely culture. First, he was one of the great Social Services Sue Kurlander symbolic moment. It symbolised the Jewish refugee thinkers driven from Community & Volunteer Services Carol Hart flight of psychoanalysis, driven from German-speaking Europe in the 1930s. AJR Journal Nazi-dominated central Europe. It also Psychoanalysis, which had emerged Editor Jo Briggs confirmed that Britain and America were first in Vienna in the 1890s and 1900s Editorial Assistant Lilian Levy places of freedom and relative sanctuary and then in Budapest and Berlin, was Contributing Editor David Herman Secretarial/Advertisements Karin Pereira for two generations of European Jews. Continued on page 2 1 AJR Journal | June 2018 Freud in Exile (cont.) was that the language of psychoanalysis and psychiatrists trained in hospitals in after the war was English not German Britain, such as DW Winnicott, Charles one of the great cultural revolutions of just as Freud’s home was in London not Rycroft and John Bowlby, who all the time, a crucial part of Modernism, Vienna. originally studied medicine and went on which influenced poets, writers and to develop hugely original ideas about filmmakers as much as psychologists We shouldn’t just speak of Britain’s gain, attachment theory and mothering. and philosophers. “They were young however. The psychoanalytic exodus Refugee analysts brought their ideas but and easily freudened,” wrote James was part of a huge loss for German- it wasn’t just one way. The new culture Joyce, whose daughter was diagnosed speaking Europe. In 1933 about 2,000 of psychoanalysis in Britain had a central as schizophrenic by Carl Jung. Virginia psychiatrists were living in Germany European accent, but it was also very Woolf’s publishing house, The Hogarth alone. By the beginning of the Second British, as much Darwin as Freud, much Press, published Freud’s works in World War, about 600, one-third, had less about sexual and death drives and English. We cannot read Hamlet, look emigrated, including the vast majority more about mothering and infants. at a painting by Dali or watch a film by of psychoanalysts. Very few analysts Hitchcock without thinking of Freud and remained in Austria or Germany. Most The gain to the English-speaking world psychoanalysis. When Freud was forced were Jewish, many on the Left (though was incalculable. The loss to central to leave Vienna soon after the Anschluss Freud himself was a lifelong liberal). Europe was devastating. Almost none it said something about the clash There was only one non-Jew in the of the psychoanalytic refugees returned between Fascism and modern, liberal Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society in 1938 to their homeland. The Vienna Psycho- culture. and he left later. Analytical Society was refounded in 1946 but only with four full members. Secondly, Freud’s arrival in London In other words, a whole generation symbolised a larger shift within of leading psychoanalytic thinkers, It wasn’t just a loss to psychoanalysis psychoanalysis itself, from German- in addition to Freud, left Austria and in central Europe. Analysts like Bruno speaking Vienna to the English-speaking Germany. A roll call of the psychoanalytic Bettelheim (The Empty Fortress, The world. Freud knew this was happening. refugees who came to Britain and Uses of Enchantment), Wilhelm Reich In March 1939 he wrote to his colleague America would include the founders (The Sexual Revolution) and Erich (and later biographer) Ernest Jones, “The of ego psychology (Anna Freud, Heinz Fromm (Fear of Freedom, The Sane events of the past years have brought it Hartmann, Rudolph Loewenstein, Society) had a considerable influence about that London has become the main Ernst Kris); two important theorists of on thinking in America in a number of site and centre of the psychoanalytic narcissism (Heinz Kohut who went to areas, from understanding fairy stories movement.” By then he had already Chicago and Otto Kernberg who went and thinking about concentration camp made his home in Maresfield Gardens in to New York); Melanie Klein and Anna victims to larger questions about society, Hampstead, where he was visited by Dali, Freud revolutionised child analysis in sexuality and human destructiveness. HG Wells, Stefan Zweig and the young London; leading Kleinians including Psychoanalytic ideas fed into some of Isaiah Berlin among others. He was even Herbert Rosenfeld and Hanna Segal also the thinking of the Frankfurt School, interviewed by the BBC. Psychoanalysis came to London, changing the centre of influenced Sartre and de Beauvoir; and now had to make its home in London gravity away from Freud’s early ideas; Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and in America. The irony is that the Fritz Perls developed Gestalt therapy in trained by Rudolph Loewenstein in Paris great psychoanalytic exodus did not South Africa; Erik Erikson left Frankfurt, in the 1930s before Loewenstein fled to destroy psychoanalysis. It accelerated Margaret Mahler left Berlin and Erich New York in 1942, became one of the its worldwide dissemination, to Britain Fromm left Heidelberg. key figures of French post-structuralism in and America, but also South Africa and the 1960s and ‘70s. Buenos Aires (which now has more These analysts didn’t just contribute their psychoanalysts per capita than any other own ideas. They trained new generations When Freud came to Britain eighty city in the world). of leading analysts on both sides of the years ago he brought the excitement of Atlantic and introduced psychoanalysis central European ideas and an important It wasn’t just Freud who came to England. into the larger culture. Think of Portnoy’s new way of thinking about the mind The translation of 24 volumes of Freud’s analyst in Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s and what makes us who we are. At 82, works into English (the so-called Standard Complaint. He speaks in a thick German already desperately ill with cancer, he Edition) was also hugely important. accent. Bruno Bettelheim had a cameo was not going to add significantly to his It didn’t just confirm that English was appearance in Woody Allen’s Zelig. legacy. However, through a generation the new language of psychoanalysis. It In recent years, with characters like of refugee analysts his ideas changed the changed the meaning of many of its key Frasier and the analyst in The Sopranos, way we think. But psychoanalysis was concepts. Its language was more Greek psychoanalysts speak with an American also changed. Britain and psychoanalysis and Latin (id, ego, superego, cathexis) accent. were both enriched. It was a classic story than German (Ich, Es, Uber-Ich), and of the impact of European Jews on British more medical and scientific than Freud’s After the war there was a rich synthesis life and culture. The great loser from this original. This translation had already between young British and American exodus, however, was German-speaking started in the 1920s, before Freud analysts and German-speaking