ECKARDT MEMOIRS OF A FOUNDING ANALYST

Memoirs of a Founding Analyst Marianne Horney Eckardt Abstract: My memoirs start with a description of the different spiritual climates in the early psychoanalytic centers of Vienna and Berlin. Whereas Berlin was enthusiastic and ready for new explorations, Vienna was bound tightly to Freud’s vision. In the United States, tensions between orthodoxy and new ventures soon led to many organizational splits and finally to the creation of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, a forum for new ideas, free of ideological restrictions.

My mother, Karen Horney, was a psychiatric resident when I was born over 100 years ago. Already, she had begun a training analysis with Karl Abraham who had introduced psychoanalysis to Berlin. Thus, psychoanalysis was always part of my environment. Now that I am living history, it is not surprising that Scott Schwartz and Jerry Perman, the co-Chairs of the 2014 meetings of the Academy, approached me to talk about my reminiscences of changes in the field since Freud’s days. What are my reminiscences about? While in part they are about events largely referring to some organizational aspects in the history of psychoanalysis, I find that my reminiscences concern predominantly our initial struggles to open up the rigidly defined boundaries of what was then considered psychoanalysis to new perceptions and new points of views. My story starts with describing the different spiritual climates in the two important early psychoanalytic centers: Vienna and Berlin. Psychoanalysis in Berlin was greeted by the pioneering analysts with enthusiasm, as a fascinating new young science discovered by Freud that invited further investigations. They loved and respected Freud and the challenge presented by the libido theory. If the libido

Marianne Horney Eckardt, M.D., Life Fellow and Charter Member of the AAPDP.

Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 42(4) 681–690, 2014 © 2014 The American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry

682

ECKARDT

theory was wrong, some thought, then what were the dynamic forces that caused neurotic suffering and character disorders? This was for them to find out. This was a special time in Berlin. In spite of severe and dire economic and political turmoil, the period between 1920 and 1930 was a cultural phenomenon. One cannot appreciate the spirit or the soul of the early Berlin analysts detached from this unique exuberant atmosphere of the Weimar Republic. Cultural energy exploded, sparkled, vibrated, and for ten years nourished the arts and the lives of people and made Berlin into a Mecca of attraction. What happened in Berlin influenced art and cultural happenings in the Western World for the rest of the century. It was this spirit that gave the Berlin psychoanalytic community its very special flavor, very distinct from the atmosphere in Freud’s Vienna where the psychoanalytic community was much more influenced by Freud’s eminence and fame. The spirit in Berlin at that time embraced breaking traditions and conventions, and viewed psychoanalysis as a force that would free the human potential and allow it to unfold. The soil of Berlin did not favor orthodoxy. Six analysts founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920, five men and one woman, Karen Horney. They were a congenial group that freely exchanged ideas. I remember many analysts being invited as friends to our house, among them Franz Alexander and Sandor Rado. The atmosphere in Vienna was different. Loyalty to Freud and his evolving conceptualizations of what he had named “psychoanalysis” was foremost. Many devoted admirers were ready to protect the sanctum of his ideas and collectively censored any new idea that did not seem to fit the Freudian framework. These differences in atmosphere set the stage for the future controversies that evolved in the United States after the immigration of most of the analysts who were to escape the evils of Hitler (Paris, 1994; Quinn, 1987; Rubins, 1978). Karen Horney, in Berlin, was certainly in the right place at the right time. She would not have flourished in Vienna. Highly gifted intellectually, she was endowed with a spirit of determined exploration. During the 1920s she began to write her now well-known papers on feminine psychology (e.g., Horney, 1924, 1926). They are a delight to read. Why, she asks, did Freud assume that women feel inferior to men because they do not have a penis? Was this a consequence of male narcissism, to believe that one half of the human race is discontented with the sex assigned to it? She does not dispute the existence of penis envy, but asks whether this can be due to social and cultural factors? This was a momentous and novel question for that time. Her notions gained support from the writings of George Simmel (e.g., 1903), a sociologist, who wrote about the masculine bias that pervades the Western culture as evident in all its manifestations: be it in law, morality, religion, or

MEMOIRS OF A FOUNDING ANALYST

683

the sciences. The concept of human was equated with man not with woman. So Horney asked, how much of Freud’s description of female development reflects this one-sided cultural masculine bias? She continued this radical questioning in many papers. She wrote extensively about problems in marriage and even questioned the monogamous ideal in a paper that elaborates what she conceived as the inevitable power struggles in marriage (Horney, 1928). These papers were characteristic for this period and thus were well accepted. I am interrupting the broad flow of the tale of the development of psychoanalysis by injecting a more personal vignette that also reflects on this time. When I was 11 and 12 years old, my younger sister and I were sent to Melanie Klein for psychoanalysis. Many children of analysts in Berlin at this time were sent to the few existing child psychoanalysts for preventive therapy. Freud’s vision located the source of neurotic development in the oedipal period of young children due to the tension between instinctual development and the demands of cultural adaptation. Hence, if one could modify these childhood traumas early in a person’s life through preventive treatment, one would potentially prevent the development of later neurotic symptomatology. We were not sent for any specific reason, nor was there any communication between mothers and analysts. My sister soon rebelled and quit. I was more obedient and submitted. This was in the early 1920s and Melanie Klein had not as yet developed the ideas for which she was later known. She followed an orthodox ritual. I lay on the couch, she sat behind me. I supposedly free associated, but my talking ritual was chronological and at the end of the hour she would interpret using early sexual symbols. There was no conversation or inquiry. It was meaningless ritual that did neither harm nor good. Soon after, Melanie Klein departed for London and to great fame. Back to the tale of the development of psychoanalysis. In 1929, Franz Alexander’s interest in criminality brought him from Berlin to a conference in Washington, DC, and by invitation to Chicago. In 1932, he invited Karen Horney to join him in Chicago to be his co-director of the first psychoanalytic institute in the United States. He had admired her ability in Berlin. Horney accepted Alexander’s invitation to come to Chicago, but stayed only for two years. She was developing her own ideas and tension arose between them. She was an independent soul and had no inclinations or talent for working in a team. She moved to New York where she became active in the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Fate again blessed her when the New School for Social Research invited her to give lectures. At the time, the New School was a remarkable interdisciplinary institution that reached out to eminent scholars who were refugees from Hitler’s Europe. Horney’s gifted,

684

ECKARDT

popular lectures allowed her to evolve and clearly formulate the new ideas that became the foundation for her next five books (Horney, 1937, 1939, 1942, 1945, 1950). The publication of her second book in 1939, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, caused the dramatic event responsible for a chain reaction leading to numerous organizational splits and culminating 16 years later in the founding of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. In 1941, on April 21, at a business meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Karen Horney was disqualified as an instructor and training analyst on the ground that she was confusing the students with her new ideas. Horney and four colleagues walked out in silence. Clara Thompson describes the jubilant spirit as they marched down the street, singing: “Go down Moses, let my people go,” the spiritual celebrating the liberation of the Jews from the tyranny of the pharaoh. The following day letters of resignation were drafted. The letter to the New York Psychoanalytic Institute referred to a steady deterioration of scientific integrity: reverence for dogma had replaced free inquiry; academic freedom had been abrogated; political intrigue abounded, and students of some analysts and supervisors were discriminated against. Fourteen candidates also resigned. The secession was not quite as spontaneous as it appeared. Preparations for secession had been made a month or two prior to the walkout, and the group went immediately into action to form a new society and institute: The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and The American Institute of Psychoanalysis. An idealistic constitution was drafted expressing the commitment to scientific freedom of thought. The group flourished for only two years. In a storm of protest, 12 members resigned when it was determined that membership in the organization was to be strictly limited to physicians, excluding psychologists with doctoral degrees. The issue came to a head because teaching privileges had been withdrawn from Erich Fromm though he had been only an honorary member. This group of 12 and others joined Harry Stack Sullivan and created the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute. Sullivan had founded a wonderful institution in Washington, DC, the Washington School of Psychiatry. It, really, was not a school but a forum for analysts (like himself) to teach whatever they wanted. Sullivan had dreamed of the possibility of creating a New York branch of the Washington School. The William Alanson White Institute, however, was not a forum. It was a teaching institute that emphasized Sullivan’s interpersonal version of psychoanalysis. Another split occurred one year later, when the American Institute of Psychoanalysis was offered the opportunity to affiliate with New York Medical College. Many ac-

MEMOIRS OF A FOUNDING ANALYST

685

cepted but Horney and her devotees preferred to transform the existing Institute into one dedicated to teaching Horney’s school of thought. At the time of Horney’s exodus from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute in 1941, another group of members of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute considered emancipation. Their astute planning stood in marked contrast to that of the Horney group. They preferred to fight from within to liberate the existing organization. In 1942 twelve members, among them Sandor Rado, Abraham Kardiner, and David Levy founded the Association for Psychosomatic Psychoanalytic Medicine. They withdrew from active participation in the New York Institute but did not resign. The constitution of the American Psychoanalytic Association at the time, allowed only one institute to exist in any one city. So the Rado group introduced an amendment to the constitution of the Association that would permit the establishment of more than one institute in a city. The Association objected and did not pass this amendment for several years, wishing to retain control over its institutes. Rado persisted and in 1945 the amendment passed, backed by liberalminded Karl Menninger, then president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The way was now clear for Rado to realize his dream for the creation of a psychoanalytic institute that was integrated into a university. The new institute was founded within Columbia University and yet remained under the auspices of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The open framework of a university would optimize the chances for maintaining an open-minded approach. Soon, there was ferment in Chicago and Washington, DC. Each institute had its own characteristics. In Chicago, Jules Masserman, Roy Grinker, and John Spiegel were in the vanguard of promoting the need for an interdisciplinary perspective and communication. Grinker and Spiegel had organized interdisciplinary group discussions that they published as a book titled Towards a Unified Theory of Human Behavior (Ginker, 1956). They formulated a refined Gestalt theory emphasizing that all human transactional systems are part of a whole and that changes in one field will affect the whole. The many successful efforts at liberation gave growing impetus to the wish for a new national organization. Gradually a network of informal discussions and correspondences developed. Clara Thompson in Washington, DC, was a key figure in the active planning of what was to be a new scientific forum for a free exchange of ideas. She found enthusiastic support in all psychoanalytic centers including Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. The careful planning, talents, and energies of many culminated in an organizing meeting in December, 1955, in New

686

ECKARDT

York. I was present at this meeting. It had been anticipated with a great deal of excitement. This was going to be a historic event. The auditorium of the New York Medical College was packed. Janet Rioch from Washington, DC, presided. She emphasized that there was no intent to start a rival organization to the American Psychoanalytic Association. The new organization was to be a forum of a purely scientific character; all the members were to be physicians and members of the American Psychiatric Association and be graduates of a psychoanalytic training school. The organization would not have any accreditation or certifying functions. A category of Scientific Associate membership would be created to welcome colleagues from other disciplines. The new American Academy of Psychoanalysis came into being in Chicago, in April, 1956. Janet Rioch was elected president. The draft of the constitution, prepared by Jules Masserman, was accepted. Committees were formed. Masserman became the program chairman for the first forum, which took place in Chicago on May 12, 1957. Let me highlight the beauty of our constitution, for it is due to our constitution that 70 years later, we are still vital, devoted, enthusiastic, and enjoying our exchange of ideas and congeniality of spirit. The first aim listed is to develop communication among psychoanalysts and their colleagues in other disciplines in sciences and the humanities. This aim was meant to break the then existing tendency toward elitism and isolation. Equally important was our aim to promote communication with each other and tear down the walls created by the exclusive adherence to a school of thought. Our forum was to be interdisciplinary, exposing us to the challenge of new vistas and data. Our most important by-law was that the Academy will not license, supervise, certify, or accredit any training facility. We did not wish to define such questions as: what is psychoanalysis or who is a psychoanalyst. To be a member one had to be a psychiatrist (belong to the American Psychiatric Association, or meet its criteria for membership) and had to have completed a psychoanalytic training. The decision for evaluation of the acceptability of such training was left up to the membership committee. To avoid the formation of power cliques, a president was elected for one year only, though his or her service was assured for three years in his or her function as president-elect and past-president. Rotations were assured for committee chairmen and members. Our success has been due to these careful considerations given the constitution. Our success was also due to the exceptional caliber of our presidents and members of the guiding executive council. Franz Alexander continued to be an amazing pioneer. He gave an impassioned speech in favor of the autonomy of teaching institutions free from central control. He stated:

MEMOIRS OF A FOUNDING ANALYST

687

It is time that we finally explicitly recognize a fundamental principle of teaching which is accepted in all fields of academic life. I mean the autonomy of teaching institutes. Our field is a new one, still very much in the stages of pioneering. We need the enterprising spirit and initiative of groups which independently undertake the organization of teaching and research institutions…What we need is not conformity, but free development of divergent points of views and emphases. We must avoid suppressive attempts to standardize our new field by enforcing conformity of opinion.

What Alexander wrote in the mid-20th century would still be considered a progressive voice in our times. He believed that treatment has to be flexible and that patients’ needs vary not only from patient to patient but also from time to time within one therapy. He researched and compared the effectiveness of various therapies and concluded: “A careful observational study indicates that in all psychotherapies which are based on psychodynamic principles, all the therapeutic factors such as support, corrective emotional experiences, and insight are operative and that distinctions of the different kinds of psychotherapies are artificial.” He emphasized that change did not occur by insight alone, but by making new experiences when becoming open to novel explorations and with change in one’s behavior. Through therapy we open up the nature-given channels of learning. Once opened, the patient can again learn from life. He thought that too much dependence on the therapist may even retard his or her progress. Judd Marmor was another impressive dynamic founder of the Academy. As president of the American Psychiatric Association, he was responsible for the historic step of freeing homosexuality from the bondage of pathology. He believed that the greatest transformation that had taken place in psychoanalytic thinking was its moving from a closed conceptual ideology to an open system, placing psychoanalysis into interactive communication with the other behavioral sciences and thus transforming and being transformed. He hoped that the various current approaches to psychiatry will be integrated into one fundamental science of dynamic psychiatry encompassing all the relevant findings of the biological, psychological, and social sciences. He felt that a comprehensive modern theory of human behavior must encompass not only man’s intrapsychic mechanisms and his interpersonal relationships but also our newer knowledge of relevant brain chemistry and neurophysiology and regard them in the context of the time, the place, and the culture in which he or she lives. I already mentioned Roy Grinker, who also believed passionately that psychoanalysis could only grow and mature if it truly embraced and functioned as part of the sci-

688

ECKARDT

entific community. Isolation spelled rigidity and decline. The spirit of the Academy was and still is passionate about its belief in maintaining an interdisciplinary dialogue. From its beginning, many committees were formed within the Academy and spontaneous workshops were organized by its members. I would like to mention my experiences in a dream workshop group organized by Montague Ullman. The members of the group worked together for six years, meeting for half a day at our biannual meetings. Working alone in our offices, we rarely have reason to question our therapeutic procedures. But working as a group, we were surprised at the variety of approaches, concepts, and interpretations of meaning. We were forced to examine our ways of working with dreams and our inference-making processes. Confusion, sharp conflicts, and feelings of anger and hopelessness often characterized our workshop exchanges during the first three years of its existence. Our meetings were sometimes painful, always struggling, and often exciting and intense. We tried to find suitable formats. Members were to respond to the presentation of a manifest dream separate from its context and then react to this same dream in the context of the patient’s life. We were interested to compare whether members’ reactions to the dream in context would change or expand their initial interpretative responses to the manifest dream. We were surprised and greatly distressed to find that so often no change was evident. Members seemed glued to their initial hunches. Almost ready to disband we shifted our focus away from arguing about our interpretations of a particular dream and instead became interested in our varied processes of inference making. Our interim correspondence intensified as members felt challenged to formulate how they worked and why. These well-formulated statements became part of our workshop exchange. We focused on explicit and implicit affect in dreams, on questions of how the report of a dream affects an analytic hour, and we questioned the premises of interpretation as the best technique to understand or use a dream of a particular patient at that moment in their lives. The quality and vitality of our meetings improved. Yet many members felt disappointed in our ability to understand each other. We were too self-involved in our own considerations to listen well. As a consequence, we decided finally to focus on learning to listen to each other and asking questions that would help us understand why we were each making the assumptions we did. This proved very successful. We began to appreciate each other and benefitted from having to clearly formulate our tacit assumptions. This was a wonderful learning experience. Much has changed in the last decades. Psychoanalysis has lost much of its status and glamour, though it is still valued as an aspect of train-

MEMOIRS OF A FOUNDING ANALYST

689

ing. Most of us practice dynamic psychotherapy and many branch out into family, group, or couple therapy. Psychiatry has embraced the blossoming drug industry and the insurance companies have dropped their support for extensive psychotherapy. But worst of all, the teaching of psychodynamics in psychiatric training programs has become almost obsolete. Hence, the urgent challenge that now faces the Academy is to uphold the torch of psychodynamic thinking and inquiry, and to provide mentorship to psychiatric residents and interested psychiatrists. This shift in circumstances and need has given new vitality to the second important mission of the Academy: the importance of active liaison and collaboration with other organizations and societies in the field. We have collaborated with organizations in China and Italy to hold joint meetings. In an innovative way members have supported a project of group teaching psychodynamic therapy to Chinese students via Skype. We have joined with another group to form the Consortium for Psychoanalytic Research located in Washington, DC. The Teichner Fellowship program has been used to provide training in psychodynamic psychotherapy to psychiatric residents training programs which are underserved in their area. The role of mentorship is being expanded in many ways. I am filled with overwhelming gratitude when I think that the Academy has been my professional home for 58 years. I thank fate for this gift. What a wonderful home it has been. It has given me a sense of belonging, opportunities for participation, many great friendships, a professional identity, stimulation, responsiveness, and encouragement to develop my own ideas. Thank you, all. May the Academy flourish for a long time to come.

References Grinker, R. (Ed.). (1956). Toward a unified theory human behavior. New York: Basic Books. Horney, K. (1924). On the genesis of the castration complex in women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 5, 50-65. Horney, K. (1926). The flight from womanhood. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7, 324-339. Horney, K. (1928). The problem of the monogamous idea. In H. Kelman (Ed.), Feminine psychology. New York: Norton. Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton. Horney, K. (1939). New ways in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton. Horney, K. (1942). Self-analysis. New York: Norton. Horney, K. (1945). Our inner conflicts. New York: Norton.

690

ECKARDT

Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and human growth: The struggle toward self-realization. New York: Norton. Paris, B. J. (1994). Karen Horney: A psychoanalyst’s search for self-understanding. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Quinn, S. (1987). A mind of her own: The Life of Karen Horney. New York: Summit Books. Rubins, J. (1978). Karen Horney: Gentle rebel of psychoanalysis. New York: Dial Press. Simmel, G. (1903). The metropolis and mental life. In D. Levine (Ed.), Simmel: On individuality and social forms (p. 324). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

147 Bay Spring Ave, Apt. 228 Barrington, RI 02806 [email protected]

Copyright of Psychodynamic Psychiatry is the property of Guilford Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Memoirs of a founding analyst.

My memoirs start with a description of the different spiritual climates in the early psychoanalytic centers of Vienna and Berlin. Whereas Berlin was e...
177KB Sizes 2 Downloads 8 Views