Monthly Archives: December 2019

‘They could not take my soul’…Lydia Tischler 2017 – and inpatient psychoanalytic treatment.

29 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in Children in Hospital, Inpatient treatment, WW2

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The British based child psychotherapist, Lydia Tischler, is an editor of the classic text: The Family as In-Patient: Working with Families and Adolescents at the Cassel Hospital. The Cassel Hospital in Kingston upon Thames, was originally established for the treatment of shell shock patients during the Great War. Under the directorship of psychiatrist Tom Main who developed the practice of psychosocial nursing, the work evolved into psychoanalytically orientated inpatient treatment of families. 

Tischler and her group also had an effect in Melbourne, Australia. During the late 1980s the Melbourne Clinic in Richmond in Melbourne under the directorship of Dr Brian Muir, a psychoanalyst, who came from Britain and the Cassel Hospital for the job. He was the head of the adolescent and family unit there during the 1970s.  Joan Christie then the Clinic’s Director of Nursing, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, was also involved. Patients with multiple and complex problems can need the supportive structure of the hospital in their psychotherapeutic journey. At least for a time. Some people with complex presentations cannot be worked with without such support. Their emotional world, so fractured by early, and accidental experiences, requires the consistency and availability of a safe secure environment.  As Marion Milner noted in her book, ‘The Hands of the Living God, an account of the analysis of a woman lasting more than twenty years, psychoanalytic treatment can enable the living of a productive life. Otherwise means a considerable demand on the public purse. It is one part of a complex policy debate over treatment efficacy, evidence and as others have pointed out, the reluctance of psychoanalysis to represent itself. 

The workings of the Melbourne Clinic project and the factors contributing to its ending are matters for historical research. I get the impression, at least as far as my memory goes, that this was an exciting and hopeful moment for psychoanalytic practice in this country. Why it ceased I do not know. 

These musings and  memories surfaced at the moment when I discovered Lydia Tischler’s interview online. Published in 2017 she speaks of her early life, the family’s arrest by the Nazis and the loss of her mother. Mengele’s nod to the right was enough to seal Lydia’s mother’s fate. Lydia Tischler was nodded to the right.

‘They could not take my soul’, she says.

Here is this most moving of interviews.   https://youtu.be/3lpTceEE3d8

Freud Conference, Melbourne, May 2020

22 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in Announcements, Conferences, western australia

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Each year on the third Saturday of May, in that space between autumn and winter,  Melbourne hosts the Freud Conference at the Melbourne Brain Centre in Parkville.  It was begunin about 1982 by a group of academics from the University of Melbourne,students of the late Professor Alan Davies. and the founders of the Melbourne Psychosocial Group. Among them were the philosophers, Douglas Kirsner and Ron Gilbert. Together with the political scientist and historian, Judith Brett, the group invited all who were interested to schlepp down to Lorne, a coastal resort a couple of hours  south of Melbourne, for a weekend of wining, dining, and talking about Freud.It featured long beach walks, lectures and time for contemplation, and reading in the final days of the indian summer.

When the conference moved to Melbourne in the early 2000s it became a day event but retained its status as an annual ‘must’ on the calendar, for all who wish to explore psychoanalytic thought and its application to society. Its attraction also lies in the fact that anyone with an interest in the subject can attend. It is not open to ‘members only’ to this or that psychoanalytic organisation, It is a space within which to give and receive knowledge, drawing on local and international developments.

Australia is a long way from Europe and the United States. It is not an easy trip but it is one that has been made often. A peek into Australia’s online newspaper archive will show how often a reporter would troop down to the docks to welcome people from their overseas study trips. Or someone would arrive for a lecture tour. The Freud Conference continues that tradition inviting internationally renowned  guest speakers to stand alongside local ones.  a long Australian tradition of looking outward, and inward, for knowledge development and exchange.

A scroll through the  Freud Conference blog hosted by Chris Hill, from the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia, gives a taste of the event, and access to the papers that have been presented. Maryanne Prodreka representing the Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists, Ros Glickfeld from the Australian Psychoanalytical Society and Chris Hill constitute the organising committee.

Next year the the conference theme will be ‘Love in a Hostile Environment: Thoughts on the young adult, the couple and the society we live in’.

It is a reason to visit Melbourne too. The conference flier with details about registration etc is here. 

‘The man Who disturbed the world’s sleep’. Sidney J Baker’s review of Ernest Jones’s biography of Sigmund Freud, 1954

15 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in 1950s, Biography of Sigmund Freud, Sidney J. Baker

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Sidney J Baker’s name began appearing in the book review section of the Sydney Morning Herald from  February 1952, building on his reputation as a  journalist and linguist, he is renowned for his collections of Australian slang. Baker formed the hypothesis that language evolved from peoples’ experiences of their new environment.    In 1941 Baker had received a Commonwealth Literary Grant of 250 pounds to complete his work on Australian slang. Baker’s interest in language also marks appeciation of the transition people had to make from one culture and country to another. He recognized that migration did not mean exact transplantation, but that in the hiving away new developments occurred. From their arrival in 1700 Settler Colonials, the British migrants in a land far away from Home in England, found new words to describe their activites and sentiments, drawing from their own backgrounds and their interchange with indigenous people. Their’s was a singular langauge, indicating the emergence of a separate ‘Aussie’ identity. They were in a land far from their British roots. Baker’s question, at its root, is about how people responded, consciously and unconsciously. Language was an indicator.

His work struck a chord with readers. His books were widely read, he was in demand as a lecturer and commentator. He gained more work in his profession. A look through the Autralian National Lirary’s digitised newspaper collection, TROVR shows that in 1952 he had landed a job as a resident journalist with the Herald. We wsee that every week from February 1952 a feature article apeared, whether it was a book review, commentary on an idea aor further work on language or exploration. His interest in the mind is apparent in his carefully written   article on the history of hypnotism prompted by a Bill then before the British House of Commons.  There is a biographical study to be written about  Baker, who seems to have had left wing views as his article unionisation of art reflects.

Baker was also an editor, the International Journal of Sexology,  published  in Bombay from 1948, a reflection of his long standing interest in psychoanalysis.  It is unclear how he made its acquaintance. It is possible that Lotte Fink, a colleague on the editorial staff of the International Journal of Sexology, responded to his curiosity. Fink’s husband, Siegfried Fink, a Sydney based  neurologist and psychoanalyst, was an Associate of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society, prior to the family’s escape to Australia. He retrained as a medical practitioner in order to continue psychoanalytic practice in Australia and was a founder member of the Australian Society of Psychoanalysts founded in 1952.

It is not surprising then that the first volume of  Ernest Jones’s biography of Sigmund Freud was *the* Book of the Week in the  the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday 1 May 1954. ‘Freud was a man who “troubled the sleep of the world” by probing into the deep levels of human motivation. He was the first man to formulate methods of effecting radical changes in human personality. He explored and charted the unconscious. Herevealed the nature of infantilesexuality.’ Baker goes on: ‘for all the immense importance of these matters, however, Dr. Jones sees his greatest scientific deeds as his development of the “free association method” of analytical treatment and his self-analysis, which began in 1897’. 1897 is regarded by Jones as the ‘acme’ of Freud’s life.

Baker recalls meeting Ernest Jones ‘ a puckish old man and international authority on ice skating’ at a meeting of the British Psychoanalytical Society during his visit to London in 1951. There is is no better authority on Freud, Baker continued. He was the ‘oldest colleague of Freud’s still alive’. Baker details Jones’s account of Freud’s early life from 1856 to 1900, when ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ was published. Baker picks up on Jones’s account of Freud’s travel phobias, anxiety and depression, to wonder for himself about the effect of early experiences in Freud’s life upon his later. And whether it was possible that events in Australia could have had  an influence in Freud’s life. It is an interesting point. Transnational linkages in knowledge, news, trade, and culture have  been occurring for a long time.   Or is it an acknowledgement of the greatness of Freud’s thought he finds reflected in Jones’s work?

Here is Baker’s final paragraph.

Australian readers may find special interest in this study because it seems highly probable that this country had an influence in shaping Freud’s character. It came about this way: His father, Jakob Freud, was a woolmerchant in the Moravian town
of Freiberg when Sigmund was born] in 1856. As increasing sup plies of Australian wool fed the English market, imports from the Continent declined. Freiberg was among the centres affected. Things went so badly for Jakob Freud that, in 1859, when Sigmund was aged three, the family moved first to Leipzig and then to Vienna. Since Freud has taught that “the essential foundations of character are laid down by the age of three and that later events can modify but not alter thetraits then established”,  one may suspect that this event, involving a break with the home of a happy childhood, left a perma-nent mark on Freud’s personality.
The entire review, complete with illustrations,   can be read here.

 

Baker followed up with his own research. His early psychobiography  My Own Destroyer , a psychoanalytic study of the explorer Matthew Flinders was published by Angus and Robertson in 1962.

 

 

References:

BOOKS OF THE WEEK (1954, May 1). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 10. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27518122

FINK Siegfried born 7 March 1893; nationality German; FINK Lotte Augusta, age 41; FINK Ruth Annette, age 7, NAA: A997, 1938/174

“HERALD” SATURDAY MAGAZINE (1952, March 15). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 9. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18250066

Cut-Rate Art For Everyone (1952, April 12). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved December 15, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18261550

 

Anna Freud’s letters to Clara Geroe: another part in a ‘life’.

05 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Anna Freud, Archive work, Diaries and Source material

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Some years ago I submitted a paper to a refereed journal. It was based on an interview about Australia’s first training analyst  Clara Lazar Geroe, with her son, George Geroe. This wide ranging interview was conducted and recorded in the sitting room of George’s home. A portrait of his mother painted by her friend, the Hungarian born Australian artist, Judy Cassab presided, hung above the mantlepiece. The artist’s choice to ‘dress’ Geroe in peacock colours: green, teal, blue purple and yellow,  brought  her gravitas to the fore along with  her love for colour and life. An apt illustration of the liveliness with which George Geroe remembered his mother. He was generous with his time  and eager to contribute his bit to the historical record.

My paper was rejected. The scholar concerned did not agree that significant new source material I cited, or information I had gathered, was based on reality. To put it bluntly. The scholar has since passed away. Things have moved on.

Clara Geroe was attracted to life, colour and bohemia. She loved the city and the cultured coffee houses of 1920s and 1930s Budapest. She had trained as a psychoanalyst with Michael Balint as her training analyst, became a full member of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic  Society in 1931 and departed for Australia, in flight from the Nazis, in 1940.  Migration was heart breaking for her. She left behind the people she loved and later learned that many of her colleagues: including the child analysts, Kata Levy, Edit Gyomeroi,  and Eva Rosenberg, had also been forced to find refuge in other countries. Another of these friends was Anna Freud who had fled Vienna with her father in 1938. ‘My mother loved Anna Freud’, George said. She had often spoken of Anna Freud to the family. George described how his mother had sent Anna Freud food parcels during the war; that she had stayed with Anna Freud during her trips to London.

And what had happened to Anna Freud’s  letters to Clara?  George did not know. His father, Willi,  had taken charge of Clara’s archive after her death. Ann Geroe, George’s wife,  was more forthright. Willi had destroyed them, she said.

I still have the correspondence in which the scholar rejected George’s account. He stated that ALL of Anna Freud’s letters were indexed. She had kept copies of everything, he said. That the friendship was Clara’s childrens’ fantasy was confirmed by the lack of letters. Of course they would say they had been destroyed. The fact was, the scholar assured me,  there. were. no. more. letters.

And so the matter rested.

Until this year.

In 2018  Clara Geroe’s papers were donated to the State Library of Victoria and, as I was assisting with this negotiation, the first access was to me. It has meant that the collection has remained with me rather longer than I had anticipated (hooray!) while the State Library finished its renovations. Which it just has.  Soon the papers will be off for cataloguing and eventually public access. Within these thirty  or so archive boxes there are references to Anna Freud in various lectures and a Christmas card or two.  Clara encouraged several young psychologists to study with Anna Freud. There is professional correspondence about these.  But no personal letters are to be found.

George Geroe’s death in February 2019 yielded still more boxes and…

Lo!

In that batch I found a small yellow enveloped marked in Willi Geroe’s hand, ‘To be destroyed’ after Clara’s memorial service on 21 October 1981. It contains several  letters from Anna Freud written in the 1940s.  Enough to show that there was, indeed, a good friendship between the two women. And that Clara had sent food parcels to Anna Freud during WW2. That Willi may have intended to carry out his plan is signified by what looks like a knife cut across this envelope. Was he interrupted? I do not know. Or did he change his mind?

We may speculate why Willi acted as he did… and why it is that the scholar could not believe George’s account.