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Monthly Archives: September 2013

More About Clara Geroe : Australia’s first training analyst

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Christine in Clara Geroe

≈ 1 Comment

Living where I do I learned that George Geroe lived locally. George is the son of Clara Lazar Geroe, appointed by Ernest Jones of the British Psychoanalytical Society as Australia’s first Training Analyst in 1940. Formerly a local GP, George is now retired. Ann Geroe, his wife, is a ceramicist of note whose work is held in, amongst other places the National Gallery of Victoria. She is no longer able to work, although, she tells me, a retrospective of her work is to be at a local gallery in the near future.

Some weeks ago I wrote George a letter of introduction. I explained that I would like to interview him about his mother. She was the only one of 6 refugee applicants, psychoanalysts sponsored by Ernest Jones in England and Paul Dane here in Australia, who arrived in this country in 1940. In later life she is reported to have said it was because she had a child that she was allowed to emigrate There were two others, Andrew Peto and his wife Elizabeth Kardos, But they remained behind in Hungary. It was not until 1948, after Elizabeth had died that Andrew Peto successfully re applied for a permit to enter Australia..  What became of the other five applicants is not known. The family had originally applied to enter New Zealand, as much to do with Willi Geroe’s interest in the outdoor life and the possibilities for that rather than anything else, according to his son.

George’s response to my note was at once a surprise and a delight. A surprise because, as he explained, I had somehow forgotten to include my phone number on the letter. His daughter looked it up for him. He was very happy to talk to me. He had read this blog, seen the post regarding his mother, and thought there were a few things to put straight.And in an interview lasting 118.02 minutes, he told me why.

Amongst other things Clara’s interest in psychoanalysis did not begin in her teens as she had related in an interview several years before she died in 1980. She had snuck into a lecture given by the psychoanalyst Ferenczi when he was garrisoned in her home town Papa in Hungary. Her elder sisters, both of them teachers, and almost twenty years older than her, had decided to go along. She, aged 16, had tagged along. It was not until she was working as a doctor in her twenties that she began to reflect upon human behaviour and, at the age of 26, began training as a psychoanalyst. Her medical training, affected by the disruptions of war, the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the aftermath the great war, was hard won but necessary. Her sisters, much older than her had had an easier run: Clara realised she would have to look after herself and qualified as a doctor.

George related the early years after the family arrived in Australia were very very difficult. Both Clara and Willi had little English, money was tight. Clara concentrated on learning the language. She had several patients she could work with using the French of German languages, if not Hungarian. Willi, despite his credentials as a corporate lawyer, was unable to find a job. Subject to the prejudices meted out to refugees he was obliged to accept low level jobs – although he could have undertaken the relevant Australian exams to register. Is that so easy when one is a refugee? Particularly when Australian society had little experience of emigration other than from England. Clara, too, faced prejudice from the medical fraternity although supported in her work by her sponsor, Dr Paul Dane.

George’s account of his parents’ lives  is compassionate and thoughtful.  He alludes to differences of opinion between himself and his mother – Ann was’ the one girl I met that she liked’ –  and the impact and stress of the work as a psychoanalyst created for her – and himself as well as his father. He acknowledges the very real friendship between Anna Freud and his mother and, indeed, the support that Anna may have provided for Clara. Ann noted that Clara used to send Anna Freud food parcels during WW2. Clara was a cultured woman,George said. She never drove, Ann related. Willi drove her into the city for work in the morning. She was always late, says George and, when she was not in her professional realm, lived the life of a Hungarian middle-class woman. Her sister, who emigrated from Hungary in the  1950s lived with Clara and Willi, cooking and keeping for her. Her Hungarian cooking is fondly remembered. Clara – ‘Klarie’ – was also a proud grandmother: deeply loved by her grandchildren as well as her daughter-in-law. And son.

I am hoping that the recording of these interviews along with the transcripts will be accepted by the a reference library somewhere… if anything they will help colour in the life and career of this most extraordinary woman, one who found herself in a role she hardly expected to be undertaking. She was not in favour of emigrating from Europe. The advent of the Nazis and war stymied that idea. Willi saw to it that they made it out, according to George. And like many refugee families they had their problems as well as their triumphs.

And here, too, if they are reading this, I would like to thank two very kind and generous people – George and Ann Geroe – who made themselves available for this project. They and I know that it was not an easy undertaking.

Kate Richards – Madness: A Memoir

06 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Christine in Australian Women Writers Book Reviews

≈ 12 Comments

Kate Richards, Madness: A Memoir, Viking, Melbourne, 2013.

Had I read Madness: A Memoir? someone asked me. I had to confess I had not even though I had seen that the author, Kate Richards, had presented at the Bendigo Writers Festival in August this year. It’s good writing, I was told. So at the first opportunity I schlepped off to the local bookshop to buy a copy. The bookseller similarly provided her endorsement. This is good stuff; the author is impressive and so on. I have not been disappointed. I read it at one sitting, more or less, on the train from Bendigo to Melbourne and back one day.

Kate Richards is a trained doctor. She suffers from what is generally referred to as a Mental Illness. Without medication the illness can take over her entire life and mind. She will live in a state of severe mental distress, believing the world created by her delusions to be real. At these times she is unable to summon enough mental strength to meet the personages inhabiting her mind and directing her thoughts. One of these two personages are benevolent. Kate calls them Henry and Rose. The others are cruel. Kate names them and explains:

“The Cold Ones are severe. Unrelenting. Psychopathic in their gleeful execution of pain. They are clever. The sneer, undermine, are disdainful. They prefer to whisper – criticisms and threats. They are featureless, blankfaced. They do not blink or flinch. They like shadow.

The Savage Ones are fire and brute force. They roar in the imperative.

you bitch. do this this

The Cold Ones nod

she’s scared now.

They titter and whisper and slither in the shadows.

KILL HER

The Savage Ones like rape. They’re not averse to fights, assault, blood, death. They find it funny. They make me dream it. They like to hear things crack and wrench. Red eyes, Red skin. Heat. Sweat.

Then there are the Cruel Ones – fond of knives and teeth.

touch us you die.

They’re always moving, they don’t sleep. The Cruel Ones and the Savage Ones gang up. Hilarious to bind hands and eyes, to dart about, to whisper, to kick where there is tenderness, to snicker where there is pain. To shout obscenities, entice nightmares, scream (shrilly); lose all sense of light and dark.

you are rotting bitch rotting we are gutting you like a fish

They are gleeful.

don’t move don’t breathe don’t fucking breathe suffocate there is force in circumstance BITCH stab yourself you’re a fucking animal we’re watching you bleed where’s the red we’re gonna kill you I singsong, lilting) do you deserve this

Yes”.                                               (Madness: a Memoir, pages 27-28)

Medication and ECT help muffle them – well enough for Kate to be able to hold a job as a medical writer, but not enough for her to be able to live in the world as a normal young woman with friends, a social life and a future before her. At the beginning of Kate’s memoir she sustains herself on a diet of coffee, alcohol, chocolate – and books. But is is a matter of finding the right medication – the combination that works for her – as well as the therapist that will guide her through. As she progresses she manages to find help and eventually come to terms with her illness. She slowly accepts  she will be taking medication for the rest of her life. Her diet improves. She learns a language – Hebrew – and travels overseas alone – to New York and to the Middle East.

It soon becomes clear that the ‘Helping System’ – psychiatrists and doctors is inconsistent and difficult to deal with. A psychiatrist overprescribes, another ‘sacks’ her for non compliance with treatment – without comprehending Kate’s difficulty recognising, let alone accepting her condition is part of the whole story. Stunningly, when Kate, in the midst of her illness burns herself with acid,and seeks surgical intervention, she is refused treatment by a Registrar, no less, because he considers it a waste of resources because her wounds are ‘self inflicted.’ As if he, or was it she? had the authority to make this decision. As Kate noted in her subsequent formal complaint her burns were a result of her serious mental illness.

There are good people. There are Kate’s friends, several good nurses and her GP, Jenny. Then there is Winsome Thomas, the psychologist and therapist who treated Kate on a weekly basis for some years. In scenes reminiscent of the encounters between the patient, Deborah and Frieda Fromm Reichmann in Hannah Green’s account of mental illness and its treatment in  ‘I Never Promised You a Rose Garden’ Winsome Thomas’s clarity and ability to stay with Kate at the worst moments of her illness, to reach and meet Kate’s demons and walk beside her helps Kate gradually  to accept her illness and its place in her life. It is about integrating an unpalatable fact, of realizing that this acceptance ultimately diminishes its power.

In these days where the evidence base counts for much – including the way the mental health dollar is spent – Kate Richard’s memoir shows the sheer humanness  that severe mental distress evokes in the patient as well as her treaters – the psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and nurses.  It affects families and workplaces; treating professionals and the institutions in which patients and treaters reside. Kate’s is not just a plea for understanding but also for the recognition of the complexity of mental illness  that increased expenditure and thought in the mental health field might address. In his memoir the South Australian psychiatrist Andrew Dibden wrote of the relief to people suffering extreme mental distress that came with the development of psychotrophic drugs and ECT from the late 1930s onwards. People were able to get up and walk, to leave institutions that had housed them for many years and to begin to participate in the world beyond its walls. Kate’s memoir shows that there are still many question to be answered.

Also written for the Australian Women Writers Review Challenge 2013.

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I am very interested in your comments, suggestions and responses to this blog and its content - good, bad, indifferent. It is all part of a broader conversation - about history, about psychoanalysis and the way people think about things. So if you'd like to make a comment on this blog, please feel free to do so. And, if you are interested in conversing further or, indeed, want to 'speak' to me offline my email address is freudinoceania@gmail.com I look forward to hearing from you.

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