• About

Freud in Oceania

~ Histories of psychology and psychoanalysis in the Oceania region

Freud in Oceania

Tag Archives: Clara Geroe

Clara Lazar Geroe’s contribtion: Fetschrift for Ferenczi: “Soul analysis studies. Theses on the main questions of psychoanalysis by Members of the Hungarian psychoanalytical association” Edited by Sigmund Freud, 1933

01 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by Christine in 1930s, Archive work, Emigres, History of Child Guidance, Hungarian influence upon psychoanalysis in Australia, Hungary

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

child analysis, Clara Geroe, historical references, Influence of Hungarian school, lost archival material resurtacing on the internet, psychoanalytic pedagogy

In 1933, well before the Hungarian Society suffered the ravages of war and dispersion all over the world, Sigmund Freud invited members of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Society to contribute to a Fetschrift for Sandor Ferenczi. The great man was ill and would die before the year was done and the volume published.

Freud had gathered the cream of the Society to contribute: Alice and Michael Balint, Istvan Hollos the Society’s Secretary, Imre Hermann, the President, Vilma Kovacs, Geza Roheim, Lillian Rotter, Laszlo Revesz, Mihaly Eisler, Kata Levy and her husband, Lajos, Lily Hadyu, Endre Almasy, Fanny Hann, Sigmund Pfeifer and finally, Klara Lazar.

Eleven years later in 1944 Hungary became Hitler’s target. it was a cruel fate: Jews were rounded up, shot into the Danube, or deprted to certain death at Auschwitch. By then some of the analysts, aided by the Ernest Jones resettlement fund, had departed for other parts of the world.

Klara Lazar was one of these. She migrated to Australia in 1940. Others remained, defending psychoanalysis as best they could.

For Klara Lazar the rupturing experience of forced migration, meant that part of her was left behind, even though she returned to Hungary once more in her life, for a brief visit in 1961. Migration, unlike tourism, means there is no return home. Word of her contribution to this volume is not known in Australia. Yet, upon reading it, one is delighted by her liveliness and ability to relate to the young people in her care. Does she anticipate some of Winnicott’s later work with parents at the Maudsley Hospital in London?

Luckily, or is it sadly, the Fetschrift for Ferenczi has finally made its way to the online platform, http://www.archive.org. The full edition can be found here. For those who cannot read Hungarian Google translate will assist access to a group of fine thinkers.

I have used Google to translate Klara Lazar’s piece, Nevelési tanácsadás – Educational Counselling.

It’s not perfect but you will get the drift..

Here is the translation –

“Ever since Freud showed how important childhood situations, the parental home, and the behavior of parents and educators are in the development of adult neuroses, the desire for prophylaxis has stood side by side with our curative efforts. This directed the attention of analysts to childhood. In our imagination, it is evident we should try to prevent the onset of neuroses in childhood. In practice this has significant difficulties. The causes of neuroses are the harmful experiences that the child has through parents, educators, and the adult environment, which, due to his vulnerability as a child, his biological and spiritual structure, he can neither avoid nor process. These indicate two paths for prophylaxis:

1. to teach adults to behave in ways that it exposes the child to the least amount of shock and illness;

2. to help the child recover with as little damage as possible.

We know that the behavior of the parents with the child it is very difficult to influence, because the principles of education and the behavior towards the child (and these two very often do not overlap!) are only apparently arbitrary. In fact they are determined due to deep reasons. On the other hand, it is very difficult to influence the child directly, due to his deep connections with his environment. Despite these difficulties, psychoanalysis started on both paths of prophylaxis. The first path led to analytical pedagogy, the second to child analysis.

In order to develop the basic principles of analytical pedagogy and actual child analysis, we first had to learn the language of the child’s soul. For about 10 years, only data collection took place. From the observation of healthy children, children’s dreams, the manifestations of childhood sexuality, from the registration of “bad habits” and “unconscious” childhood manifestations, we see confirmation of everything that was known from the analysis of adults. In the beginning, in our therapeutic vision — if it was a child — the adult, nurturing person was also included in addition to the child. Apart from the real difficulties, the reason for this was that, being adults ourselves, it is an easier task for us to understand and influence adults. As the development of psychoanalysis expanded our knowledge of the child’s psyche, and its structure and characteristics became more and more clear, analysts learned to return to childhood impartially through the recollections and self-analysis of their adult patients.

In literature, Freud (Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjáhrigen Knaben) and Ferenczi (“A cock-loving boy” [AKA Little Hans] were the first to report cases of child neurosis. An acquaintance of Ferenczi’s refers to the the little “cock-loving” Árpád. Freud only controls the course of treatment for his little patient from the background, the treatment is carried out by the father himself. These indirect child analyzes are the first indications that the analytical technique can be transferred to the treatment of children. Freud even believes that no one but the father could have succeeded: “…the technical difficulties of a psychoanalysis would have remained insurmountable at such a tender age…”

Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was the first to open the door to the children’s room and cutting off the mediators. She began to regularly analyze children with the aim of healing. She opened the door of the children’s room, visited the child in their home, because she believed the child’s environment needed to be realistically included in the analysis for the child’s honest expression and understanding.

Melanie Klein developed a special analytical technique for younger children (2-5 years old): the play technique. She brought a symbolic miniature outside world from toys into the analytical room; observing the child’s spontaneous play and using the symbolism of play to interpret the child’s unconscious. Her work brought new knowledge about the earliest forms of the Oedipus conflict and the early stages of development of the little girl’s sexuality. For these child analysts, numerous theoretical works (Freud’s, Abraham’s treatises on the development of sexuality and libido, and Ferenczi’s treatises on the development of the sense of reality) provided the basis for them to immerse themselves in the spiritual life of the child.

Oscar Pfister from Switzerland was the first to bring the analysis to teachers. As a priest, he had ample opportunity to use his analytical knowledge to look into children’s spiritual problems “in statu nascendi” and help them. Bernfeld’s theoretical works aim to lay the foundation for analytical pedagogy. He was the first to deal with the phenomena of adolescent life, group and community formation. .

In “Verwahrloste Jugend”, August Aichhorn reports on what he observed in the group education of disturbed children with the knowledge of “Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse” and the “superior ego” (Freud) and from these observations developed a completely new, analytical educational method. He formed homogenous groups of his students according to their symptoms and, adapting to their unconscious, without any external pressure, offered them a way through the love-relationship, so that the development of their ego can continue and thereby become social. Zulliger’s special practical work is characterized by the fact that he is a teacher and an analyst in one person. With a subtle sense, he recognizes the unconscious roots of his students’ learning and character development and uses the teacher’s positional advantage in the emotional transmission relationship this preventing more serious problems.

Anna Freud’s work represents a new chapter in the development of child analysis. In her work entitled “Einführung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse”,s he reports on the analyzes of neurotic children in their latency period. Her technical innovation: giving up analytical passivity in the introductory phase of child analysis, she tries to win the child’s love and trust with active means, because the child only maintains a positive emotional relationship possible. Theoretically: the child’s ego has only partially separated itself from its parents, it is still partially developing and works under the influence of realistic demands from them. From this follows what defines the difference between child and adult analysis: The child does not develop a real disposition; child analysis is not possible until we can work with the ready-made parts of the ego, which is joined by the further shaping of the ego through the environment, i.e. the educational work.

If we now look at the development of child analysis, we see that at first the analysis of children could only be imagined through adults, or later the milieu of the child included in the analysis realistically (Hug-Hellmuth) or symbolically (Melanie Klein). Then when we already knew enough about the child to directly we have found that the specific structure of the child’s soul dictates for the adult environment, not as a mediator of analysis, but as a supplement in its natural nurturing position. Now, based on our knowledge of the child’s mental structure, we are able to consciously choose the way of our help — direct treatment of the child, management of education, or a combination of these two.

For Pfister, Aichhorn and Zulliger, the position of priest, educator and teacher also dictated contact with parents, supporting their healing work with educational advice, and actively influencing the child’s external world. Understanding the unconscious made it easier to recognize educational mistakes, and their social situation made it easier to see these mistakes. The positive results of their practical experience encouraged the analysts to set up analytic education consultants. Aichhorn, as a reviewer of the Jugendamt of the city of Vienna, organizes educational consultants, where he himself and then his students work in his wake. Today, partly under his leadership, work as an educational consultant is carried out within the children’s department of the Vienna psychoanalytic polyclinic. The “educational consultant” technique – although of course it offers the widest possibilities for individual work offers the widest possibilities for individual work. Each educational consultant tailors his technique on a case by case basus. This was developed by Aichhorn, the father of psychoanalytical educational consulting.

In Budapest in 1928, within the framework of the Children’s Protection League, dr. Under the leadership of Margit Dubovitz, the first analytical children’s ambulance was established, which, unfortunately, soon became stateless after the termination of the League’s operation. Now ( in 1933) with the establishment of the Clinic of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Association in Budapest, as part of our new children’s clinics, we are also trying to work as educational consultants.

The introduction of shorter-term treatments in suitable cases was justified by the external circumstances of our ambulance: for the many children who are waiting for help, our analytical workforce is too few, and it is important from a social point of view that this should reach the children who really need analysis. Below, I present some cases from my work as an educational consultant here.

The possibilities of “educational counseling” are of course limited by the accessibility of the parents’ unconscious and primarily by the severity of the child’s illness. My own experience shows that it can be applied very widely; even for children who come to us with various complaints and often show symptoms that seem to be severely neurotic but a minority are truly neurotic. In most cases, the difficulties that children present are not deeply rooted neuroses of traumatic origin, not even rigid forms of reaction, but simple reactions to the behavior of the educators or parents. However, if this correction does not take place: “gutta cavat lapidem”, character anomalies or neuroses inevitably develop from the above beginnings sooner or later.1

I am reporting the following cases to illustrate how long-lasting, good results can be achieved, sometimes even more I am reporting the following cases to illustrate how long-lasting, good results can be achieved, sometimes even in seriously impressive cases, educational counseling. I have been monitoring several of these counseling cases for a long time, and sometimes I receive or request reports about them. In general, with the exception of one case, I report on children I have known for the third year, since I myself strongly doubted the durability of the quickly achieved results, and so I only dare to refer to such cases, which I have had in mind for a long time.

k I.

Bandi, 10 years old. His mother brings him. He is the child of janitor parents living a good married life in orderly conditions, apart from a 12-year-old, II. they have a civilian daughter. Complaint: he is a bad student, even though he is intelligent, he is about to fail and their problem is whether he should go to civics? Disobedient, lazy, unambitious, inattentive, playing around, messing around, unpleasant at home. The mother is a good-looking, smart, apparently energetic, strict woman with a sword. She resents the child mainly for his laziness, punishes him a lot, deprives him of his pleasures, and even beats him. ,

Please, being a boy, I can’t use him for anything and he’s lazy at school too; if I send it for something, or if it should help, it wanders off, useless. I am so unlucky with it! The other, my little girl, is the first student for being a girl, she helps at home, she’s clever, she’s smart” and proudly adds: “She even plays the violin beautifully!”

“Does Bandi study music?” I ask.

“But, please, he’s neglecting his studies too. Damn, we can’t waste the money on violin lessons, it wouldn’t last for two.” ,

“What about the master?”

,” Please, he is a good man, but he doesn’t care much about the children. He is down in the boiler room all day; the care of the house, the lot of cleaning and running around is all mine.”

In response to one or two more questions, she says that since his early childhood her son worked hard with strict parents, competing with men.

The situation was obvious from the constant complaint that the child was so lazy for being a boy, from the description of their life, from the praise about the girl . The mother, in her cherishing love for her daughter, compensates herself for her penis envy in her daughter. In her son, she suppresses the men she envies, and she lives out her complaints and aggression against her husband. The child’s behavior is the answer to this treatment.

Talking to the reasonable, correct, open child, my hypothesis was strengthened. The reason for his lack of ambition is that he cannot compete with his “perfect” older sister, and the competition is unequal, because he does not receive the reward of his mother’s love. He is so full of complaints against his mother and jealousy of his older sister that he just pours out when he is given a little encouragement: Mama is very strict with him , makes an exception with her sister, she – usually the girls – have a much better job, they get clothes, they are not beaten, , but they are such chatty monkeys!” He doesn’t take his word for it, because mom is never satisfied with him anyway.

And the tramping?” He likes to wander around with his good friends, ride their bikes, which his mother often forbids as a punishment. “What about studying?” Yes, he is a bad student, but he really wants to go to the civil service, because if he could only be a coal miner, everyone would look down on him. And on top of all this, as the symbol of unattainable desires and dreams, the grandeur: the violin! If he could play the violin too! But it can’t be, because it doesn’t take 10 pengős and two, he doesn’t even deserve it. ,

Maybe we could talk to mom after all? say, if you will study better?”

An indescribably bright and yet doubtful look is the answer to this.

Now it’s mom’s turn again; I tell her that the child made a good impression on me, I don’t consider her sick. I think the only problem is that he loves his mother very much and is jealous that she gives the little girl more honors and considers her more talented. , The child feels that she loves the little girl more!”

The mother acknowledges the jealousy and justifies it immediately with a small episode: , The little girl asks for a cube of sugar because her coffee is bitter, she gets it, and the boy immediately asks for it too. I say: Your cup is smaller, one is enough, – so he is not done with the reproach: He doesn’t give it to me because he loves Irma more, he doesn’t love me! He’s so sensitive! I’m going to get angry and pick him up.”

Now I’m just passing by how much Bandi wants to learn music and that there is no money for that while Ilonka is studying. A lot of small episodes come to light, through which I manage to show the mother even more that she demands more from her son, . because he’s a boy. She treats him badly because boys have a better fate and she feels sorry for the little girl because she is a girl. He also feels sorry for himself, he values his own work so much.

Laughing at this, she says that he would rather be a man if he has to work. —

When I emphasize his son’s great love for her, she is visibly moved and happy about it.

Thus, I manage to negotiate a free vagabond and bicycling lesson for Bandi every day, and she promises that she will try to treat the two children equally and register the boy as a citizen in the fall. Together with the mother, we communicate these to the child.

After two weeks, they come again, both of them visibly more satisfied. The mother is happy to report: the child is learning, he listens, and the situation with his sister has also eased. The mother spontaneously mentions that it has been decided that the boy will take his exams in the fall. they will also teach him music. After the successful exam, I see the child again in the fall as a citizen, he is also learning music, which he is very happy about. Of course, there are setbacks in learning, weak average, but they also see improvement at home and at school. The mother visited me a few more times, she was still satisfied, which is best proven by the fact that she referred many complaining parents to our order.

_________________________________________________

xx II. In another case, the special kindness was given by the fact that the mother became aware of the reasons for her educational mistake almost on her own, and thus came to us with the ready-made material for being a simple working woman. After one of my popular lectures, where I talked about educational mistakes and their unconscious sources, she approached me and told me that she was so self-conscious about certain points in the lecture that she hoped she could get advice on what to do with his younger daughter, Erzsi, who is 4 years old. whom he can’t stand. She is willful, tyrannical, if she doesn’t want something, or cries until she vomits, or declares: “I yell so much that the neighbors run!” When she does this they let her go for the sake of peace. She also has a 6-year-old daughter, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

She has never dared to talk about with anyone, she was ashamed, and considered it impossible, unnatural: that she didn’t love this little girl when she was born, and not even for a long time after! After the birth of her first child, she had a peak period and the doctors advised her not to have any more, but when she became pregnant and applied for surgery, her doctors encouraged her to carry [the pregnancy] through and even though she didn’t want to, she couldn’t help herself. She and her husband had serious financial problems. Throughout her pregnancy, she was nervous, constantly vomiting.

In the meantime, however, she reconciled somewhat, with the hope that she would at least have a son. When she found out that her daughter was born: she hardly looked at her, she felt a deep sadness, she didn’t want to touch her, she couldn’t breastfeed her, and she remembers well that when her husband first came in and took the child in his arms, she told him angrily: “Leave that baby alone!” This was repeated later; whenever the father touched her, she always waved him off. “I don’t like her and I didn’t want to see my master like him either.” SHe says with great shame that he didn’t love the child so much that he didn’t even take care of her, neighbors took care of him and only when she was a couple of months old, when she once bathed and dressed her, she was moved by the child’s helplessness and neediness and started to care for him, she felt sorry for him and when developed, and loved it. Today she loves her very much,she spoiled her. The child was prone to crying, vomiting and hernias, so she went to the doctor a lot with her. She was always worried about his life.

It turns out that since this emotional change,s he feeds her excessively, fills her with force, torments her with loving care, and the child reciprocates this violence by vomiting, yelling, and uproar at the neighbors, with which she terrifies and embarrasses her mother. The little girl is what we imagine her to be after the antecedents: thin, well-groomed, intelligent, bully with her brother and peers, narcissistic and she feels good about it; she makes his anger felt immediately and considers this to be normal.

It was very easy to make the mother understand (she herself said that she did not dare to let the child cry or punish her, she was always afraid that she would get sick or die) that this is a great indulgence: compensation for the old hatred; fear for the child’s life: remorse for her death-wishes. She realized that if she wanted the child’s eating to improve, the vomiting and tantrums to stop, she should not force the little girl to eat and temporarily take care of her meals – even if she did not eat for 2 days – and her other bad manners. Too much care can be just as bad, even worse, than too much strictness.

She kept our agreement, which was a great act of heroism at home — with his father, with the environment — in addition to the child’s provocation. After the first difficult week, the little girl became aware of the changed hand, her appetite returned, after 2-3 rampages for which she did not receive extras, she stopped rampaging. After two weeks I gave mother permission, if necessary, to punish her. ‘If the child really annoys you: tell her, show her.

The quick effect of our advice would have been like a fairy tale magic wand, if the little girl’s measles hadn’t jeopardized the result. This illness almost brought the mother’s old mechanisms into action, and she came to me again with her concerns. At that point, I emphatically asked her not to change her agreed treatment; we will have won a case if the child spontaneously accepts to eat after the patient’s lack of appetite (a common experience) and does not allow his tyranny to gain strength again during his illness, even though he cares for him a lot. The mother also passed this test beautifully, her older daughter also got measles, after a mild illness they both started to eat, and they became good friends with each other in their shared misfortune. She adds to one of the mother’s positive reports: she actually received the same advice from pediatricians, but she couldn’t take it, now it worked out so well! Since then, I have often heard about them directly and indirectly, there is nothing wrong with the child.

j s III. Sanyi, 12 years old,

citizen, only child. About 10 days before our examination, he ran away from home with a friend, they wandered for 2 days, the police brought them back. There are no complaints about his behavior, but he failed a grade repetition in the 1st high school and now, in the 3rd high school. he fails 3 subjects in civics, even though he has a good mind. His reason for running away, according to his parents: shame due to poor studies and failure. The mother is extremely worried, someone who attaches her child to her in every way, and if a child runs away from home, we can assume more serious symptoms, derangement, which needs analysis, and after what we heard, we thought of this here as well; but the situation was different. This escape was not serious, they set off without money or equipment, as it turned out later: not so much out of fear of punishment and shame, but rather out of some deep inner desire: free-

This escape was not serious, he left without money or equipment, as it turned out later: not so much out of fear of punishment and shame, but rather out of some deep inner desire: to be free! Free to roam, at least for a while without anyone to command! The boy sleeps in the same bed with his mother (he is 12 years old!), according to his mother, because he is very restless at night, tosses and covers himself. The child complains that his mother does not allow him to be around other children, nor to go on trips or to play football; on Sunday, you have to walk with your parents in good order. The mother justifies these prohibitions that her son is well-bred, a good child, the rest would spoil it; he is afraid of overheating and pneumonia when moving freely, all the more because he had tonsillitis a lot, his heart and lungs were attacked, and another child in their family had already died because his mother let him go freely. The principle is that it is best for children to stay with their parents. Sanyi could now get to Lake Balaton with one action, but he doesn’t dare to let go because he wants to go swimming. the child’s heart would certainly not be able to take boating. Not this mother at our first meeting. I managed to convince him neither that the child needed more time off, nor that it would not be good for a 13-year-old boy to sleep in the same bed with him. His castration fears, fixation and guilt towards his son were not approachable from any side. However, we agreed that the child would be examined and if his heart and lungs were found to be intact, he would be released to Lake Balaton. Of course, the tests were negative and Sanyi left happily. I talked to him once or twice before, it turned out that he was masturbating, with the usual fears (spinal atrophy, impotence, as a consequence of masturbation), which I tried to dispel. It also turned out that the mother is unfoundedly afraid of him being spoiled. He is extremely burdened and stressed by the great training and worrying of the mother, ashamed of this “mama’s boy” role . His thinking is clouded by the many ambivalent emotions weighing on him towards the tyrannical and fixating mother, and he keeps wandering into daydreams (Tagtraums). In his fantasies, he talks about his gratitude to his mother, but he declares he would be happy if he were allowed to sleep in a separate room.

In autumn, after the holidays, he came again. He had grown well fattened, grew, big In autumn, after the holidays, they bring it again; she gained weight, grew, felt great and completely changed. His demeanor opened up, became almost masculine. The parents noted all this with great joy, and even though this summer and the medical tests were a good trump card against his mother, they were not willing to agree to sleeping separately even at their son’s request. There was nothing left but to try to get help from the father’s side. The father proved to be understanding and well-intentioned, and through him the child’s freedom was achieved – despite the mother’s objections.

This was at the beginning of the school year. I saw him again around Christmas; there was no problem with studying or anything else, the mother has a hard time accepting the new constellation, but the child and his father have become strong allies and vote her out. Through the teacher – who sent him to me – I hear about them more often, so far the result is lasting. —

So it also happens that a person frees the priest with educational advice! The boy’s vagrancy, which looked like derangement, was a healthy attempt to escape from his mother, documenting what his mother did not want to understand anyway, that the boy wanted to break away from her, and this was required by his healthy development.

On the one hand – by sleeping in the same bed, his mother gave the boy too much freedom and too much excitement, on the other hand, in a tyrannical way, she prevented him from venting his excitement and feelings in any way (prohibitions on masturbation, sports, making friends). His emotions will be disharmonious, ambivalent, no: he just loves, but also fears and hates his mother, the source and suppressor of his excitement. The only outlet for his ever-increasing tensions is fantasizing, which distracts him from his studies, and since his fantasies are also in “forbidden” areas, he has to suppress these and the feelings that come with them. This again increases his internal tension and reduces his ability to work. This unbearable tension drove him to wander. When the he gets help in difficult situations, his ability to perform is released, his learning improves, and the child blossoms.

Case 4.

Józsi, 11 years old, 5th grader, father is a baker’s assistant, mother is a laundress, only child. His physical development was normal, his habituation to cleanliness was easy, the III. he studied quite well until elementary school, after that he started to decline, lost his way, missed school for 2 weeks at one time.

On New Year’s Eve, his parents left him alone in the evening, then he ran away, spent the night outside the house, when his parents found out about this, he says: ,,k . . . . “aunts” (sic!) wanted to see and listen to what they were talking about. At the same time, he secretly sells small items that he receives as gifts, and sometimes takes small amounts at home. Upon reporting the school, he is sent to foster care, and from there to a boys’ home, where he has otitis media received, operated on and sent home. Since then, the child’s character has been deteriorating, he lies, is dirty, urinates at home and at school, defecates, often twists and studies very poorly. he is constantly punished both at school and at home, his parents – who used to pamper him and call him names – are now rude to him, especially his father. They beat a lot; according to her own admission, her mother he often bursts out in his anger: “I wouldn’t mind if you died!” “I’ll kill you if you lie!” etc. The mother cries a lot for her son, who, seeing this, cries with her. According to his mother, the change in the boy’s character could have been caused by the fact that they changed apartments and the child got into bad company at school and there is a public house on the street near their new apartment, which excites the child. 2

The boy is small, with a neglected appearance, a very dull facial expression, withdrawn, trusting, indifferent. He appears to be sub-intelligent, answers with difficulty, softly, without color. The question, do you feel good, really surprises you? It’s even more so when I say that I don’t think he’s having a very good time, because I hear from his parents how bad things are, how much he gets out, both at home and at school. And how would it be good to help it to look different? At this, the child loses his previous indifference and begins to cry bitterly. I let him cry, and then I say that he came here to get help, there is no punishment here, this is not a school, patronage or court, the children come here so that if there is no way they can manage something on their own or with their parents, help get He will definitely have such things and we will try to help him! The child sniffs more calmly now, we talk a little more in his own slang, about football, movies, friends, he leaves very relaxed. If we thought of depravity in our previous case: Józsi’s symptoms — vagrancy, theft, lying, truancy, dullness and dirtiness If in our previous case we thought of depravity: Józsi’s symptoms — vagrancy, theft, lying, truancy, dullness and dirtiness — pointed to an even more serious disease,? which naturally I did not think could be solved with simple counseling. In spite of this, as in all cases when I start dealing with a child, I asked the parents – in front of the child – that for a while, while the child is entrusted to me, they should preferably not be punished or beaten, but wait to see what I can do with the child in another way. I have a two-fold goal with this: on the one hand, to win the child’s goodwill, and on the other hand, since the meeting takes place in front of him, he feels the treatment that is different from the previous ones and this – without taking his promise – obliges him a little, that something else is going on with him too. – let them do it. I order this little boy for treatment three times a week. When the child came 2-3 times, the change in appearance, facial expression, and behavior was shocking. While the first time he gave the impression of a disheveled, disheveled, dull, defiant, aloof, uninterested child, 3the second time his clothes were in order, overall he was freer, lighter, his facial features softened, as if a great weight had been lifted from someone. In short, he seemed like a well-cared-for child who has good things to do at home and is good with his surroundings.

Although I have experienced it several times, I am always very surprised when children show such a big change in appearance, manner, behavior and mood after one or two conversations. I suspected myself of being biased, but others who see the children state the same thing, and I myself have seen a similar rapid, big change in the children of other analysts at our clinic. Even more strangely, this change often remains permanent. In this case, I think, it was possible to see why it was created so quickly and the result remained permanent. The boy is happy to report that the parents kept their promise, did not hurt him, and can go to the square. Studying is done in two hours, you can play for the other two. Now, more precisely, he goes home, but never before! It’s not good to be at home, you shouldn’t pee; dad always sleeps during the day (he works at night) and immediately yells and hits, mom also always fights when she comes in the evening and he’s not home. And if he gets on the field, he is a “soccer”, “glutü”,And he – when he gets down to the square – , soccer”, , glutyü”, window shopping, and hütty!

He travels so far that by the time he gets home, it is late at night, and at home there are already fights and beatings; so now there is no! There are also many complaints about the school; the teacher, the real monster, is unjust, evil, rude, mocks and beats the children, especially the poor ones! , You too?” , Uhm, – only, – he always makes fun of me, hits me on the head, that’s why I don’t like him at school.” “What are you mocking?” , Well, he always says my name, the others laugh at him.” I didn’t manage to find out why it was a tease for him when his name was said, but it soon became clear. All I could find out about the bowel movement is that it has been there since he was in the home. There, according to his story, they had a joyless life, they were kept strictly and with a lot of beatings, their supervisor only allowed them to go to the toilet three times a day at a fixed time, and they introduced the fashion of defecating and he got used to it. He feels the urge to defecate, but he postpones it until it’s too late, just like small 1-2-year-old children.

Because of this, he has no shame, he declares that he is not stinky, they don’t know at school, and when his mother sees him, she gets angry and gets him out – there is a defiant silence. After 2 weeks – just by the way – he says: “Since I’ve been coming here, I’ve only done it twice in my pants, and I haven’t even been beaten for it.” In these two cases, we managed to expose his defiant reactions to bad luck at school: both times he did it in helpless anger. He visited me about a month ago, when one day he was drawing something, and instead of H. József, he wrote himself T. József under his drawing. , So what is this? Is that your name? Until now you said: H. József! Or am I wrong?” The child is confused, blushes, stammers: “No, my name is T. József!” Excited, he doesn’t want to give any information. “Do you have a second father?” “No, that’s my dad!” “His name?” , H. Mihály. T.’s mother’s name!” he finally groans in great agony. , What name do they call you at school?

To József T.” , That’s why you said they’re making fun of me?” ,

Yes. T. is such an ugly name!”

“Well, maybe that’s not the only reason you don’t like this name?”

He listens. He keeps repeating this bluntly, very brokenly: “My dad ….”

“Tell me, son, do you know why they call me Mama’s name?” ,

No!” ,

When will another child be called by the mother’s name?” ,

Uncle Teacher said. . . he told me too. . . if illegal. . .” , That’s why you said they were making fun of me?” — He nods. , When did you first hear about this? Have you known for a long time?”

“At first I knew my name was different, but I didn’t know why, I didn’t even think about it.” “Didn’t you ask?” , Yes, but mom didn’t say why?!

Once, dad was having fun in the old apartment, the housekeeper shouted that there is no coal in the cellar: The thief…, the scoundrel…, lives in a wild marriage!” I think of the “aunties” who “be- to wind” you want: , So maybe they said something about mom too? Something bad?” :

NEHI and NEHA

“Are you sure, Józsi?” ,

But, yes… I knew: something ugly, bad. Here, in our street, when we came to live here, I already knew.” “Were you with them?” , No.” s Hdívák? ” , No. I was always curious about what they were saying, I just wanted to listen, but nothing special.”

I didn’t manage to find out directly about his fantasies about prostitutes, but I could deduce from our other material that: he wanted to know the “k” — who he was spying on — his mother; his mother’s secrets — the “wild marriage”. His mother had many abortions; the “k”s have intercourse, but there is no child, they do something secretly, sinfully. At that time, it often dies

He often heard the socialists being scolded, not mentioned with any honorable adjectives, and he knew that his parents were them; from these half-suspected, half-heard things, he wanted to piece together the secrets of his parents, — his own ashamed, hidden origin, behind which he looks for sins to be ashamed of in his parents, if only as a revenge for the injuries they receive because of it. When we shed light on these, we discuss sending his parents in to see if we can help with the name issue. The parents, in great shame and apologizing, say that the child belongs to the current father, but he was born prematurely and that they conspired and grilled him a few years ago, and due to lack of time and money, they have not legalized the child until now. The father has now promised that this will be replaced as soon as possible. We share the good news with the child. After this, there is a rapid improvement, which is also noticed at school; a nice religion teacher honors him, he gets a poem for the exam, which makes him very happy, because he was looked down upon by everyone and was last in the class for 2 years.

He does well in his exams, his parents and his whole family celebrate him as a converted sheep, and he receives a gift. The summer went well, in a holiday promotion, he was considered a child with little interest and easy to handle. He almost completely stops having bowel movements, according to his mother, only one problem happens once, in September, when he has enteritis. In autumn, there are 1-2 minor school disasters, sometimes even a few pennies are missing at home. Complaints against his teacher later revealed: why did he change so suddenly in the third grade? . “The teacher was rude to mom too,” he once said.

“How?” , He said to a boy: pimp.

I told mom then, he went to school and the teacher told him. to uncle for saying nasty words to us. Then they quarreled together, mother also scolded him at home.”

It turns out that this discussion took place with mutual insults, with some political edge, and that the teacher did not look kindly on the child after that, or at least that is how the boy puts it. His mother always told him the truth during this time. The child thoroughly enjoyed the new situation, he hurried to rebel – instead of his father, against whom he was already seething – against the teacher, on whom he could transfer his jealousy, anger, and contempt for his father The child thoroughly enjoyed the new situation, he hurried to rebel – instead of his father, against whom he was already seething – against the teacher, on whom he could transfer his jealousy, anger, and contempt against his father for “coal thief”, “wild marriage”, etc. because of In addition, all this with the support of his mother! For him, the situation at school has now become as confusing as the one at home: respect and hatred, contempt side by side for the father-person. Meanwhile, the school sent warnings, bad certificates, complaints, until finally the mother also turned against the child, and they started punishing her at home. This then completely upset the child’s balance. He felt that he was being cheated again by his mother, by the adults: 1. with the father, who is not even his father, does not give his name, and is a thief, a marauder, 2. with the teacher, with whom his mother starts the fight, he sides with his mother against the teacher and his mother lets him down, sides with the enemy, believes that he is punishing him for his rant at school, when this is his demonstration next to his mother, the teacher against!

The vagrancy, thefts, sniffing after street girls begin. Then, in patronage, he gets even further away from his parents, which he feels is an even greater betrayal, and anal regression comes. In the second grade — when he is on good terms with his parents — he stifles the accusations against the parents; now, after his disappointments, he rebels, wanting to find out the suspicious secrets, and then shows his parents in his own messed up existence: “you are Pharisees, that’s what you really are, you deserve it!”

This child was under treatment for a maximum of 130 hours, but I was able to monitor him for 2 years — with breaks. The symptoms of urination have completely disappeared; minor frauds, vagrancy, lying, there was even an uncertified class in the first year, but he studied hard. In the meantime, he was assigned to another teacher; he learns German, is transferred to the civilian class, and in very serious family constellations — father’s illness, the birth of a little brother — holds his ground. According to his parents, where they knew him, the constant topic of conversation was this child’s great metamorphosis. Typical: last year he found strings of pearls in a package on the street and – after a great mental struggle – handed it over to the police. He told me this happily and considered it a great feat himself. Then they moved to a distant suburb, from where it was difficult to get to and from treatment; the child said he now so sure of himself that he only needs a little help, say once a month.

CONCLUSION

I still classify this case as one of my educational counseling cases not only because we could not clarify the childhood fixation points of anal regression, but also because it is my conviction that the I owe my success primarily to the coordination of the parents and the role I took on by actively standing by the child. By taking on this role, I gave the child a way so that, trusting in me, they could approach the society of adults (whom they were disappointed in) out of their exclusion; from his depravity and defiance to normality. I used my influence to give him back his good parents. x The common feature of these four cases is that it was possible to help the children’s problems through understanding parents or through parents’ mediation. I could cite many other cases; but I could cite many more cases where, due to parents’ opposition, successful analyzes failed or children could not be treated at all. In such cases, analyzing the parents could help! The scientific significance and therapeutic safety of the “Educational Counseling” outlined here is far behind that of in-depth, regular child analysis. The importance of this technique is primarily that it was quick help, and it is precisely from its advantages that its disabilities flow. If we take into account these disabilities and our refractory cases, we can still establish the absolute necessity and great social importance of the work in “Educational counseling”.”

The end of the dream: Clara Lazar Geroe and the Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1940- 1945

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Christine in 1940s, Clara Geroe

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Biography, Clara Geroe, History, Hungarian influence, Melbourne, refugee analysts, the end of the dream, Winn in Sydney wanted Clara to live there.

On 17th August 1940 the Sydney based psychoanalyst Roy Coupland Winn wrote to Clara Geroe,the Hungarian trained psychoanalyst who had arrived in Australia on a refugee Visa five months earlier. ‘Considering the fact that there seems little likelihood of starting an institute in Melbourne, why not practise in Sydney? You, [Siegfried] Fink and I could commence a clinic’. Fink was a German born psychoanalyst, also refugee, who had arrived in 1938. Winn continued:  ‘It may be a mistaken idea but I think that three analysts would make more rapid progress than two, just as two than one; I am of the opinion that analysts tend to advertise and feed each other, partly because as the practice of each is necessarily small each has to send any overflow that arises to be done by others; thus each also receives advertisement from each other’.

It was a tempting offer.  Clara Geroe and her family had landed in Melbourne on the strength of a promise, a donation of five thousand pounds by a benefactor, Lorna Traill, for the commencement of an institute for psychotherapy.   The family was on its way to Sydney, she wrote later.  A place like Buda, with hills all around but close to the sea. But a Melbourne based psychiatrist Dr Paul Dane – a man with a dream – had  argued, successfully, that the Traill funds were to be used to establish an institute for psychoanalysis along the lines of the British one headed by Ernest Jones. In Melbourne.  Dane had written to Jones about it. Jones, in turn, always a supporter of psychoanalysis, particularly if it was a medical enterprise, encouraged its development. But the donation had not materialized. Traill had withdrawn her offer. Negotiations were continuing. Geroe had had to wait it out.

In her reply to Winn Geroe said that the Melbourne group had managed to retrieve a thousand pounds from Traill.  Another five hundred pounds was  promised if the Institute was opened on the benefactor’s birthday. It was barely a viable figure but Ernest Jones had given the project his blessing. Sydney though would be sidelined.  It would be only a Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis, Geroe continued. Not the Australian Institute originally envisaged. Geroe would have preferred to start small she wrote in her notebooks. She would have liked to have built up a following before launching such a complex project as an Institute. But Traill had made the condition  that an institute was founded with the funds. Geroe could do no more than shrug her shoulders and comply.

The Melbourne Institute for Psychoanalysis was duly opened on 11 October 1940, Lorna Traill’s birthday. Roy Winn made the long journey from Sydney to attend. Judge Foster from the Children’s Court led the proceedings. A coterie of psychiatrists – Reg Ellery, Norman Albiston, Albert Phillips among them, all attended along with  local educationalists, nurses and workers from the Children’s Court Clinic. In July 1941 Geroe was made a member of the British Institute of Psychoanalysis and appointed as a training analyst. Jones, one might say, had captured the Australian Dominion for his Empire.

All the while Geroe was bitter, sad, and upset about having to leave the intellectual, cafe culture of Budapest. She was trying to settle into Melbourne,  in a land on the other side of the world, far from the pastoral beauty to which she was accustomed. As far as she was concerned Melbourne was a back-water. If her husband’s decision to leave Hungary and Nazi Europe was prescient, Geroe was a trailing spouse. She was not accepted by the Australian government on the basis of the work as a psychoanalyst. In fact none of the six psychoanalysts with whom she had applied for a visa, first to New Zealand and when that was refused, to Australia, were considered eligible for entry. Her husband’s experience as an accounts manager in a factory making magnesium bricks was most probably the reason for the family’s acceptance. That, and his decision to seek the assistance of a local Sydney solicitor, Eric Jones who, somehow, managed to obtain visas for the family.  Their own application  made directly to the Australian government through Australia House in London had failed two weeks earlier. The Geroe family left Budapest on 20 January 1940.

On Friday  20 April 1945, about four years after the opening of the  Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis, three of the Board members met with Clara Geroe, at the office at 111 Collins Street, the rooms rented from the Union Bank of Australia by Dr Paul Dane.  Dane, the founder of the Institute, along with psychiatrists Guy Reynolds and Albert Phillips had called the meeting ‘to deal with the matter of the renewal of Dr Geroe’s agreement with the Institute’.

Geroe was employed by the Institute as its resident training analyst on  14 January 1941.  Her  second two year  contract expired on 14th January 1945.  By April 1945 it was clear that the Institute’s financial position was such that ‘it could not be renewed’.  At this stage it was agreed that Clara would continue at the Institute for a salary of four guineas a week. Of this she would pay three guineas a week a rent for the use of the rooms, telephone and so on. Five hours of her time would be devoted to the Institute’s Clinic, providing services on behalf of the Institute.

Matters did not improve. On 3rd August 1945, another meeting was held, this time to discuss Dr Paul Dane’s decision to resign as Chair of the Board. The Institute’s financial situation was more than  perilous: Dane, it appeared, had fallen behind in his rental payments – perhaps  a result of his absence through illness.  He owed forty five pounds to the Institute. But Clara and her husband, Vilmos,  a trained accountant, had compiled a financial statement and proposal showing that the Institute could continue  for a further thirteen months. ‘It was decided to carry on’, the psychiatrist Reg Ellery noted in the Minutes. He continued, ‘Dr Geroe proposed to continue her work for the Institute without a fee’. This, of course, ‘was willingly agreed to’.  Geroe took on Dane’s share of the rent and his rooms, with the proviso that he could return at any time. Frank Graham, Geroe’s first trainee was elected as a member of the Board.

On 23 September 1945 a third meeting was held between Geroe, Graham, Ellery and Guy Reynolds. Paul Dane had decided to take twelve months leave of absence on consenting to withdraw his resignation as Chairperson. An Acting Chairperson, Albert Phillips,  was appointed.  Clara Geroe was elected to the Board and, along with Dane and Graham,  approved as a subtenant of  111 Collins Street.

Most importantly Clara Geroe was recognized by the Board as ‘no longer an employee of the Institute but  ‘voluntarily agrees to give without any renumeration the same services [to the Institute’s Clinic]  as heretofore; and that her previous agreement with the Institute is null and void since 3rd August 1945’.

And so Clara Geroe’s psychoanalytic career, begun in Hungary in 1926, entered its longest phase.

 

References:

 

Roy Winn to Clara Geroe 17 August 1940

Clara Geroe – draft reply to Winn, c August 1940

Clara Geroe, notebooks in English language, c. 1940.

Minutes of the Board of the Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis – No 20, 20 April, 1945;

No 21 undated; No 22, 3 August 1945; No 23, 28 September 1945.

Finding Dr Clara Geroe: Dr Harry Southwood Psychoanalyst, South Australia.

16 Saturday Aug 2014

Posted by Christine in Oral History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Clara Geroe, Psychoanalysis in Australia

Several accounts of Dr Clara Geroe, Australia’s first Training Analyst, have appeared in the public domain during the last thirty years. Two of these are oral history interviews with Dr Harry Southwood, the first and, for some time the only, psychoanalyst in Adelaide South Australia published in 1994 and, in 1995, a similar interview with Melbourne based Dr Frank Graham. Both were undertaken by Dr Wendy Brumley and published in the Australian Journal of Psychotherapy as was Deidre Moore’s Memoir of her analysis with Geroe, in 1998. This was also published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy in 1999. These impressions of course add to an emerging portrait of Geroe in addition to that provided by her son, George Geroe and in the memories of those who were either her patients or supervisees.

While trawling through archival material in the State Library of South Australia I came across another oral history interview, this time undertaken by Dr william Andrew Dibden as part of a larger project on the history of psychiatry in South Australia. I have blogged about this previously here. That post mined Dibden’s interview with Dr Harry Southwood to introduce ‘Dr Charlie Winter’, a German doctor whose training had included analysis with German Psychoanalyst Hans Sachs. In this post I am picking up the threads of this same interview to provide another glimpse of Clara Geroe. First, though, I will follow Dibden’s process as he begins tracing Southwood’s career.

The interview reads as a meeting between two old friends and colleagues who together have lived the evolution of psychiatry; from the days, said Southwood, when ‘the word “psychiatry wasn’t known. I never heard the word”Psychiatry” in 1939. I might have read it, but there was no Psychiatry in Australia”. Southwood became interested in ‘psychiatry’ when he attended lectures in psychological medicine given by a Dr Rogers, commonly known as “Daddy Rogers”, who lectured in forensic medicine. ‘Not’, said Southwood, ‘Psychological medicine’. He continued. ‘He was one of those traditional gentlemen aristocracy doctors of the city of Adelaide and he had a private practice which was, I gather, largely what we’d call today ‘psychiatric’.

Southwood may have been referring to Richard Sanders Rogers, listed in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as an ‘orchidologist and physician’, born in Adelaide in 1861 and who died in 1942. Upon reading the entry in the Dictionary of Biography one learns that after completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide Rogers qualified in medicine in Edinburgh and returned to practice medicine in Adelaide. He was a consulting physician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital from 1897. A member of the South Australian Medical Board in 1910-40, he was president in 1932-38. Rogers was the first superintendent (visiting) of Enfield Receiving House (1922-36), superintendent (visiting) of Northfield Mental Hospital (1929-36), and honorary consulting psychiatrist to all State mental institutions (1939-42).

Southwood graduated in medicine, became a General Practitioner in a small practice and subsequently gained a Bachelor of Science – a way of increasing his psychological knowledge. The course he completed combined physiology and psychology. He was appointed as a Medical Officer at Enfield Hospital in 1939, just before the commencement of the war and was able to combine this with private practice. He became interested in ECT and built his own machine – ‘originally made out of a gramophone’.

Southwood’s interest in Freud began when he read some of Freud’s work as a schoolboy. As a general practitioner he tried to apply what he had learned, taking detailed histories in the course of his work,

trying to understand just how it was [the patient] got into the mess they were in…It was simply the idea that of we could understand all about it, we could find a better way of coping with whatever the problem was. And they were all fairly simple things, looking back on them. People would never come to a Psychiatrist those days, I suppose. They weren’t going to a psychiatrist then. They were only going to a GP because they had headaches, or they couldn’t sleep, or they had indigestion or something. And it was only talking to them and finding out that perhaps they were more worried about their mother or worried about their husband, or worried about because they were frightened of getting pregnant, or whatever it might be. That’s where I was at at that time.

After reading an article by Roy Coupland Winn, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, again around 1939, Southwood related, he wrote to Clara Geroe. Perhaps it was several years later than this as Clara Geroe did not arrive in Australia until March 1940. He did not receive a reply. A year later he wrote again saying something along the lines of

‘Dear Dr Geroe

I understand that analysis begins from the moment of one’s first contact with one’s analyst…I wrote to you a year ago and haven’t heard from you since. I presume that has caused [some analytic crisis]. I would be interested to know if there is any prospect of a reply’.

‘She rang me up’, Southwood continued. It was, he learned,

characteristic of Clara – she wouldn’t write for a year, then suddenly she’d ring you up and make you think it was an immediate crisis. Anyway she rang up and said she was sorry she hadn’t answered my letter. I think her system was not to answer anyone’s letters but if you wrote two or three times she’d think you meant business. Anyway we eventually got into communication and I…went off to Melbourne and started my analysis with her.

 

At this time training was not well organized Southwood explained. The Melbourne Psychoanalytic Society was a ‘sort of unofficial branch of the British Society. But it was after the war and everything was chaotic and so on’. Subsequently Southwood had supervision with Clara Geroe. ‘I used to analyse someone in Adelaide as best I could and I’d take my notes across to her every month or so. And we’d have long talks’, discussing all that had transpired between himself and the patient and what he did and should have done. His dated his training years from 1946 to 1953 and was eventually made an Associate Member – of what is not specified in the interview, perhaps the Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis. He was, he recalled, the first to achieve this. Frank Graham, another doctor, who was Melbourne based, followed.

References:

Transcript of Interview with Dr Harry Southwood by Dr Andrew Dibden for Psychiatry in South Australia Oral History Project, dated 3 November 1979. PRG 842/1/2, State Library of South Australia

Harry Southwood with Wendy Brumley (1994), Interview, Australian Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol.13, Nos 1 and 2, pp. 1-19.

Frank Graham with Wendy Brumley(1995), Interview, Australian Journal of Psychotherapy, vol. 14, Nos 1 and 2, pp.1-14.

Deidre Moore (1998), A memoir of my psychoanalysis with Dr Clara Geroe, Australian Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol.17, Nos 1 and 2, pp. 178-191.
(1999) British Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol. 16, No.1, pp.74-80.

 

COPYRIGHT… Christine Brett Vickers        This piece is entirely based on my research. You are welcome to use it with the appropriate acknowledgement.

The Visit of Anita Muhl, Psychiatrist, to Melbourne: 1939-1941

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Christine in 1930s, 1940s, Psychiatry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anita Muhl, British Medical Association, Child Welfare, Clara Geroe, learning about human behaviour, nursing, Public Education, response of the general public to these ideas., Social Work, teaching, Una Cato, University of Melbourne

In her 2005 book, Freud in the Antipodes,, Joy Damousi writes of the visit of the American Psychiatrist, Dr Anita Muhl, to Australia from Feruary 1939 to the end of 1941, to provide education and consultation about human behaviour and relationships to professionals and lay people. Damousi’s analysis concerns Muhl’s role as a ‘listener’ as people either poured out their hearts to her sometimes in long letters, or curious, sought Muhl’s opinion on about an aspect of their lives – whether about a dream or a difficulty they were having. Damousi’s thesis, that this reflected the development of a ‘listening culture’ co inciding with the emergence of Freud’s ideas in the early decades of the twentieth century, is developed here.

Upon looking at the very rich archive of her visit, it becomes clear that Muhl’s three years living in Melbourne attracted considerable interest from groups and people who were interested in the developing mind  and were seeking ways in which to further that understanding. Muhl was not the first international expert in child development and psychology field to spend time in the country. Susan Isaac’s six week visit to Australia in 1937, as a speaker at the New Education Fellowship Conference,  had put a face to the author and magazine columnist expert on child development. And since the early 1920s psychology courses at the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, Queensland Adelaide and Western Australia, all  included a strong component of psychoanalysis in their psychology or education programs. 

Looking through the archive  the question about where  to find help for psychological distress and from whom to seek it, was a common question in the letters from the public – that have been included on the file. Some writers stated explicitly that they had found no one able to help them. Part of the the agreement made for Muhl’s visit was that she was not able to practice. Her focus was to be teach, lecturing and consultation. Muhl’s visit also intersected with the arrival of  Australia’s first training analyst, Clara Lazar Geroe, in March 1940 and the formation of the Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis in October that year. Geroe, too, was to find a sophisticated and receptive audience.

Muhl’s visit was at the invitation of Una Cato,  the daughter of philanthropist Frederick Cato, who had made his fortune as a grocer. The idea of a visit was developed between Una Cato and Anita Muhl during the latter’s stay at the Cato residence during the latter part of 1937. At this time she was wending her way back to the United States after a prolonged world tour. Muhl subsequently related that when Cato suggested she return for a tour of lecturing and teaching, she had replied that she would come for three years, all expenses paid. Cato had the means to enable this.

First Cato did her research, ascertaining the degree of interest in a possible visit from Muhl from amongst the medical. legal, education, medical and psychological professionals.   Amongst the people she met with during March 1938 were psychiatrist, Dr John Williams, the educators, Christine Heinig and Kenneth Cunningham, the philanthropist, Sir Herbert Brooks, British Medical Association President and paediatrician, Dr Kingsley Norris and Mrs Rapke, whom Cato listed as ‘Magistrate at the Juvenile Court’. At this time Julia Rapke, well known in feminist circles, was forming the Women Justices Association of Victoria. Some were enthusiastic, without knowing much about the subject. Others were more circumspect. Christine Heinig wondered about Muhl’s training: was she familiar with the work of Melanie Clyne (sic) she wondered? Others checked her qualifications while remarking on her good sense, sanity and tact – observations made during her short visit in 1937. Cato was able to gain support from these senior people, providing assurance Muhl would not be practising psychiatry with patients during her visit. In turn they wondered what venue would be best for her. And she met with people at the university. An honorary post meant she would work for free, one consultant noted. A university appointment would be due recognition of her qualities and skills, another noted. In the end Muhl retained her independence. She took up residence in a building called Kia-Ora, along St Kilda Road. Outside the trams rattling by her doorstep provided access to the city. Under the heading, ‘Director of the Association for the Understanding of Human Adjustments’.

Muhl made herself available for lectures to women’s auxiliaries, schools, medical people, nurses and legal practitioners.Nursing groups who invited her to speak to them more often than not chose to hear Muhl’s thoughts on the serious matter of Mental Hygiene rather than the option she provided, an account of her visits to India or Iceland. Women’s auxiliary groups fundraising for hospitals, mental institutions and welfare organizations sought her out for lectures; she lectured to social workers, psychologists, teachers and educationalists, probation officers, and held reading and discussion groups for women doctors. Members of the (male) medical fraternity also sought her opinion and invited her to lecture to them.  She provided pieces for the Women’s section on the Australian Broadcasting Commission and negotiated her way through Melbourne Society. She was able to say ‘no’ to those who wished to use her to prop up their social status; and to invitations she considered irrelevant to her purpose. At the same time she seems to have gone out of her way to oblige – for example, accepting an invitation from a newly formed mother’s group at one of Melbourne’s maternal and child health centres.

As news of her presence and knowledge spread people wrote to her about their problems. We do not know how many people wrote to her. The letters that remain are remarkable for their thoughtfulness as writers puzzled over their problems and invited Muhl to puzzle with them. One, written by Rose Currie in late 1939 provides a glimpse of the hardships and anxiety experienced by women living in isolated places. It also suggests the mental effort needed as people sought to understand their minds.

Rose Currie wrote:
I am no longer young and I am a daughter of pioneer parents, on land, in Gippsland. I wonder if your ‘Mental Hygiene’ would conquer a disability such as emotional tears?

For many years I was associated with public life. I still am associated with local affairs, and a struggle with tears is a perfect nuisance in some circumstances. It is not that I have not, and do not try to overcome this disability. It cramps one’s style greatly. I have thought it is because of the great stress of pioneer days on the land, among the tall timbers, which my mother experienced. Fear of Bushfires in summer, Storms in winter and all the anxieties associated with her young family and dangers with stock, etc.

I would appreciate greatly your opinion if fears in a mother can be transmitted to a child, and, if, even in middle age, it can be overcome by Mental Hygiene and Prayer?

Rose Currie had heard Muhl  read the Prayer of St Francis of Assisi during one of her radio broadcasts. Could she have a copy? Muhl was happy to oblige. In her letter to Currie she assured her that infants did, indeed, pick up upon and reflect mother’s moods and state of mind.

In January 1940, the author and poet Celia Albrey wrote to her:

Will you let me know if your Association deals with individual problems in psychological neurosis and maladjustment? Mine is a problem of some five years standing – a psychological ‘hold-up’ in creative work following a period of tragedy and manifesting itself in severe physical illness whenever I try to overcome it and I feel that modern knowledge and common sense should overcome it but it is beyond me unaided.

My chief difficulty in this state is that I do not know whom to consult and I know it is no job for a layman practitioner. If such individual cases are outside the scope of your distinguished work will you let me know of a specialist here (in Melbourne) whom I could consult?

Muhl replied she was unable to practice and recommended Dr Alice Barber or Dr Selby Link as possibilities.

In a sense Muhl’s visit, to educated and consult was timely. If the two letter writers are any reflection of the public at that time, both were groping towards the understanding of something within themselves, perceived, but hard to grab, was moving them. Perhaps they were aware of Freud’s theories of repression from reading and listening to radio broadcasts they felt free to admit that understanding was beyond their conscious awareness. Muhl was the expert where no other could be found.

 

References:

Joy Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia, Sydney UNSW Press, 2005.

Dr Anita Muhl Correspondence 1939-41, MS 11459. State Library of Victoria.

Letter from Rose Currie, 10 October 1939, Anita Muhl Correspondence, MS 11459, Box 1765/6, State Library of Victoria.

Letter from Celia Albrey, 5 January 1940, Anita Muhl Correspondence, MS 11459, Box 1765/1, State Library of Victoria.

Introducing the Europeans – revised….

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Christine in 1950s, Clara Geroe, Emigres

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Clara Geroe

I have revised the post: Introducing the Europeans 1938-1958. Here is the link.

Oral History interview with George Geroe about his mother, Clara Lazar Geroe

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Christine in Australian Women in Psychoanalysis, Clara Geroe, Oral History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Clara Geroe

My interview with George Geroe about his mother, Clara Lazar Geroe, Australia’s first training analyst, appointed thus by the Ernest Jones, president of both the International Psychoanalytic Association and the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1939-40, is posted on the online journal, Psychoanalysis Downunder. The link is here.

On ‘A Reluctant Immigrant’ – Clara Geroe, The Meanjin Interview

04 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Christine in Australian Women in Psychoanalysis, Clara Geroe, Narrative and Memoir

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Clara Geroe

There is relatively little material available in the public domain about Australia’s first training analyst, Clara Geroe. Several online biographies outlining her contribution and influence on psychoanalysis in Australia after her arrival in 1940  tress her professional work while moving swiftly across her ‘refugee story’. These accounts are based on the interviews she gave to Douglas Kirsner in 1977 and 1979 and published in Meanjin in 1983.  The impact of Geroe’s arrival, a watershed in the development of the psychoanalytic discipline in Australia, and her longer term influence is still being absorbed. She was a medical practitioner, relating first and foremost to those in that profession. But she also recognised lay professionals and drew these practitioners into her circle. Less conscious perhaps, is the influence not just of her European background in a country which stressed Englishness and upheld the White Australia policy, but also of her refugee/migrant experience. Clara described herself as a ‘reluctant immigrant’: she did not wish to leave Europe and only came to Australia’ because Hitler came to Europe’. Her link with Britain legitimized her status and presence: she was Australia’s first qualified and approved training analyst under the aegis of the British Institute for Psychoanalysis.

During the last two decades historians have been able to provide a good account of the encroachment of Nazism on daily life in Europe; they have been able to investigate the response of governments outside Europe, providing context for the types of decisions, and circumstances people such as Clara Geroe were facing. Let us begin with Kristallnacht.

On 6 November 1939, Herschel Grynszpan, aged 17, a young man of  Jewish German origin, bought a gun, loaded it with 5 bullets, and walked into the German Embassy in Paris. He shot one of the diplomats Ernst vom Rath  three times in the abdomen -an act of revenge for his family’s expulsion from Germany. It was the excuse the German authorities needed, the historian, Martin Gilbert explains. On 9- 10 November, Kristallnacht, Nazi stormtroopers conducted systematic raids in cities and towns across the country. Synagogues were smashed, homes and businesses broken into and looted. Jewish families were rounded up made to stand and wait outside in the cold night for hours. Women and children were separated from their menfolk who were deported to the concentration camps for several weeks. They returned  with orders to leave the country, to go to any country that would take them.

The trouble was, as Louise London pointed out in her 2004 book, Whitehall and the Jews, few countries would do so. Great Britain, acting on policies developed in conjunction with the USA in 1933-4, and London shows, fearing that the influx of foreigners would undermine its social fabric, limited its intake essentially to women and children – to be employed in service. Few men were admitted. Many who did make it avoided internment by joining the British Armed Forces.  Those who were not of German origin fared better – for a time. Despite this reluctance to accept refugees, members of the psychoanalytic profession, led by Britain’s Ernest Jones, became  one of the few professional groups to lobby for  European colleagues at risk of Nazi persecution. The Freud family was an exception. Even so when the family arrived in London Anna Freud fearing repercussions for those left behind, asked reporters to stress they had been well treated.

Australia was slow on the up-take and New Zealand, too, was closing its doors. While there had been some co operation between Britain and the Dominions concerning intake during the interwar years, this had dwindled from about 1933 – due to concerns about an influx of  undesirables – possibly communists and revolutionaries in the guise of refugees.  (London 2000:43).

To leave one’s country of birth with no possibility of return: to relinquish its sights, sounds and smells; to be without the mirroring of one’s self within one’s community is in the realm of accumulating psychic trauma. In their book, Migration and Exile, Lesn and Rebeca Grinberg show how one may respond to such dislocation by becoming frozen in time, relating internally to the culture left behind; becoming, perhaps even more ‘European’ or more ‘English than English’ , more of whatever was part of one’s roots than those that remained behind. For Clara Lazar Geroe, her ultimate arrival in Melbourne was the culmination of a long story of doubt, uncertainty and dislocation. She told some of this in two interviews with Melbourne researcher Douglas Kirsner, the first held in 1977 and second in 1979 – shortly before her death in 1980. This was compiled by Judith Brett these were  published in Meanjin in1983.

For Australian psychoanalysts Clara Lazar Geroe effectively parachuted into the local scene. While much of its historiography, including Joy Damousi’s Freud in the Antipodes  stresses the activity of medical practitioners. he first two qualified medically trained analysts were Sydney based.  Dr Roy Coupland Winn who qualified first as an Associate and then as a full member of the British Psychoanalytical Society set up in private practice in 1931. The second qualified analyst, Dr Fink who arrived in 1938 from Germany – another escapee from Nazi Germany – was a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society. He worked in the New South Wales mental health services before entering private practice. Paul Dane in Melbourne was another key figure. Lay people: educationalists and psychologists – including workers in the child guidance movement, found their way to psychoanalysis through psychology and philosophy studies at the major universities. As in Britain and Europe and building on the work of the Child Study movement,  the child guidance movement was developing with psychological clinics as far afield as Perth in Western Australia as well as in the eastern states.

By 1940 the theory and practice of psychoanalysis was a lively arena, of discussion and debate – if the press is any reflection. Psychoanalytic ideas were rubbing shoulders with those from psychology, philosophy and education since the early 1920s – also traced by Damousi. There was Sir Francis Anderson whose leadership of The Australian Association for Psychology and Philosophy and its journal was instrumental in the dissemination of psychoanalytic  ideas in the Australian community from 1923. The Association held regular meetings, with branches in the main capital cities. Professor John Anderson also from the University of Sydney combined philosophy and psychoanalysis in his work. At a community level and in regional areas talks were given to through the Workers Education Associations.  In 1937 British psychoanalyst Susan Isaacs, an associate of Melanie Klein,  visited Australia for the New Education Fellowship Conference which, after preliminary sessions in New Zealand,  travelled to each of Australia’s state capitals from 1 August and 20 September 1937. Isaacs was waited upon by senior Canberra women – from the Governor General’s wife down! Ruth Thomas a Western Australian based psychologist returned from England to attend the conference as did educationalist and psychologist Madeleine Ekenberg after a ten year absence. Ekenberg, who took the time to visit her folks in Singleton, New South Wales, warrants a post in this blog in her own right. She was working with child psychotherapist Margaret Lowenfeld at the London Institute of Child Psychology. Clara Geroe’s arrival may have provided locals with the impetus to formalise, and centralise.

Clara Lazar Geroe was born on 4 October 1900 in Papa in Hungary,  was the daughter  of Adolf Adam Lazar, wholesale grocer, and his wife Ilona, née Lusztig. Although Jewish, Clara completed her secondary schooling at the local Calvinist college. During WWI when the psychoanalyst Ferenczi was garrisoned in her town with his regiment she snuck into one of his lectures with her two older sisters who had been invited to the event. By Clara’s own account, she obtained one of his books from the local bookshop -which had brought them in knowing the author was in town, and after reading it felt she had found her vocation. By her son’s account she was little interested in psychoanalysis at that stage. In about 1923 she completed her medical studies in Prague and, back in Budapest in 1925 and working in a hospital for nervous disorders,  was accepted for training with the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society. Seminar teachers included anthropologist Geza Roheim amd Michael Balint on infant development. She said of this period:

One didn’t have as long an analysis as now and the rules were less strict. In Australia today I am the only one of the training analysts who sees trainees only four times a week. The others all keep strictly to five times a week because that is the ruling. And whereas nowadays analysts and trainees avoid meeting at public places or seminars no-one worried about this during my training… Probably some of the complexities of the transference relationship were not recognised then.

In in his 2002 book, The Hitler Emigres, British historian Daniel Snowman has traced the influence of Jewish refugees upon British Culture: the arts, music, literature, the law. He  points out that young Jewish people in the late nineteenth into the early twentieth centuries  were aware that certain professions were barred from them. Politics, the public service and indeed the Church were closed to Jewish people. They were pushed out. Rather, many gravitated to Law or Medicine or indeed the studies of economics, philosophy, music literature or journalism and publishing. Many thought of themselves as ‘assimilated’, Snowman goes onto say, arguing that those who aspired to culture and sophistication thought of themselves as members of their home country’s culture. It implied rejection of ‘partisan ideology, separatism, exclusivity, dogma- Jewish or any other – and in their place, the aspiration to embrace universal truths and the whole of humanity. These were the sentiments of the press and the academy, not of the army, church or politics’. And it separated them from the the unsophisticated basic lives of Eastern European Jews, those who had not made it, ‘people without a culture who clung to outmoded attitudes’, Snowman continues.  Germany stood for urban and urbane life, Snowman continues. Not the fields and the ghetto, but for emancipation and enlightenment rather than atavistic obscurantism. (Snowman 2002: 8). Jews who served in WWI and were awared the Iron Cross felt they belonged; they were German rather than Jews. One can only imagine their profound sense of betrayal on Kristallnacht.

Perhaps this sense of whether or not one belonged was less of an issue in Hungary than Germany. Jewish people assumed they did belong. The Historian Bernard Wasserstein traces these in his 2012 book, On The Eve. From 1867 when acts were passed freeing Jewish people from legal restrictions  Jewish people had prospered moving into the professions and into the nobility… Antisemitism seemed to belong to a less civilised past’. They felt at home in Hungarian  From 1920, though there was a harbinger of things to come. The reappearance of the numerous clausus, a quota system enacted into law in 1920, restricted admission to university no more than 6 per cent of  student of Jewish origin. it was the first anti -semitic law in interwar Europe. ( Wasserstein, 2012: 28).

For Geroe, being a psychoanalyst in Europe was part of being part of cultured community. ‘Analysis was a cultural and vocational interest and not extremely lucrative’, she explained in her interview with Kirsner. ‘You had to be a bit of revolutionary to become interested, to think for yourself and not be with the establishment’. There was no distinction between medical and non-medical people, she continued… Perhaps this was a rather pointed comment. Tension over such distinctions rumble still in the local Australian scene if not elsewhere. And, as if to add to the halcyon days of the past Geroe remembered, ‘No-where were women treated more equally than in analytic circles’. Child analysis was also developing during the 1920s and 1930s. Geroe worked with Alice Balint in a children’s clinic which closed down when the Nazis came. Anna Freud’s work was commencing; there were meetings in Budapest and Vienna. The group also received patronage from leading families. Geroe explained:

The Baroness Herzog endowed the Analytical Society with a villa in a beautiful forest where fifty children, most of whom were in analysis, would come for two to three months in the summer. We would give them sessions once or twice a week to see how they were reacting to the therapeutic milieu.

August Aichhorn, whose work with delinquent children was based in milieu therapy, was very interested in this project, she continued. Aichhorn had begun the first child guidance clinics in Vienna in 1927.

The reason Geroe came to Australia with her family  was ‘because Hitler came to Europe’, she said flatly.  It had been a good life before that, a ‘happy well-ordered life’. She had had no intention of immigrating. But during the 1930s life had become oppressive, as it had for all Jewish people.

Uniformed police were always present at our (psychoanalytic) meetings. Their presence was mainly to vex us,  but if they could have put their finger on anything they would have suspended the Society immediately. Everything intellectual in which Jews took part was suspicious and persecuted, and perhaps more than half our members were Jews or counted as Jews according to the Nuremberg laws. Still we had our practices and it was a hard decision to leave.

By the end of the 1930s antisemitism was official state policy in Hungary. Many sought escape by converting to Christianity. Others such as Geroe were being forced to face the fact that the future for them if they remained in their homeland was dire. There were visitations and warnings from abroad. In 1937 when Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia she had barely heard of Australia let alone New Zealand. Britain sent someone to help. Geroe explains.

 Dr John Rickman of the British Society came to Budapest to advise us how to get out and where we could go. We heard of countries about which we knew almost nothing and New Zealand was one of these. It was suggested to several of us that we should try and get a permit to New Zealand. The emphasis was on those people who were child analysts and interested in education because New Zealand had recently hosted a large international congress on the New Education Fellowship  Movement which Susan Isaacs had attended. There was a lot of interest in modern educational ideas in New Zealand, more than in Australia at the time.

What went on at the 1938 -9 Psychoanalytic Congress in Paris, what discussions were had, the emotional atmosphere, and the urgency with which European Jewish Psychoanalysts sought assistance from their international colleagues can only be imagined. A group of Hungarians at the 1938-9 Psychoanalytic Congress in Paris then met with Ernest Jones who, Geroe says, confirmed that there was an interest in Analysis in New Zealand, but mainly child analysis. From initial perusal of the New Zealand’s digitised newspaper collection: Papers Past, this seems not to have been accurate. It may be that the British Rickman, so far away from Australia, had not grasped that his colleague, Susan Isaacs, had spent most of her time in Australia. Perhaps in the way of these things, and not fully apprised of the details he had heard she was leaving for New Zealand… but not much more. It was enough to encourage hope for these people so desperate and far away.  Geroe and  four or five colleagues applied for admission to New Zealand.  Contacts were made and letters written – to Duncan Hall the Colonial Secretary at the League of Nations.  The New Zealand Government refused them. Twice.

New Zealand’s refusal of the applications of six prospective analyst refugees, and Australia accepted but two of them is a story in itself.  Judith Brett‘s short biography  of Geroe  published in the Australian Dictionary of Biography which traces these events is a master of understatement:

At the International Psycho-Analytical Congress, held in Paris in 1938, Clara had explored the possibility of six Hungarian analysts emigrating to New Zealand. Their applications were refused. A group of Australians—including Bishop E. H. Burgmann, the doctors R. S. Ellery, R. C. Winn and Paul Dane, and (Sir) Charles Moses—took up their case with the Commonwealth Department of Immigration. Of the six, only Clara was accepted. She later surmised that she was selected because she had a child. With her husband Vilmos Gerö (William Geroe)—whom she had married on 27 August 1927 in Budapest—and their son, she arrived in Melbourne on 14 March 1940.

In Europe things were deteriorating. It became more and more urgent to leave Hungary. Geroe, finally, was able to get a visa – for Australia… perhaps ‘because I had a child and Australia was always keen to get families’. Then the permit was cancelled when war broke out. She was relieved at first. ‘ I was so ambivalent about leaving that I was glad we could stay, but then after some months our permit was renewed because Hungary was not a declared enemy in the war’.

What finally tipped the balance for Geroe is any one’s guess. Daily life for Jewish people was becoming impossible. In May 1938 another anti-jewish law was passed in Hungary cancelling the licenses of Jewish small business owners and subjecting Jewish in the professions to the numerus clausus– a quota. ( Wasserstein, 365). Another law was passed in May 1939 -‘adopting a racial rather than a religious definition of Jewishness. It severely curtailed Jewish economic activity and civil rights, restricted Jewish participation in the professions and required the dismissal of Jewish civil servants ( it was possible in Hungary to be a civil servant until then) theatre directors and editors of the general press. Only those Jews whose ancestors had lived in the country before 1867 retained the vote. The 7,500 foreign Jews in the country were ordered to leave’. ( Wasserstein, 405). Geroe may have had no choice… And then there was Kristallnacht.

Paul Dane was waiting for Geroe when she arrived at Melbourne in March 1940. Again there were promises. There was talk of grants for the establishment of a psychoanalytic organisation… but overseas qualified medical practitioners did not have automatic registration in Australia. Geroe, nevertheless, began work at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne – the first to do any child psychiatry at all. In October 1940 the Melbourne Institute of Psychoanalysis was opened with money donated by Miss Lorna Traill. There was a lot of interest and good will Geroe remembered, ‘partly because people wanted to help the European refugees and do something against Hitler’.  Geroe, appointed as the analyst of the Institute, was to give three hours a day to institute patients – and was paid 4 guineas a week. She was to see every new patient- difficult because all new patients had to be seen by a registered doctor. She wanted to set up a free clinic – for what she called ‘analytic psychotherapy. There was also her children’s clinic. Her project.

This was a bit of a private war of mine. I had made a promise to myself that as I was lucky enough to come away from Hungary  safely with my family, I would never turn away from the institute for financial reasons any child who needed help. I kept to it as long as I was physically able.

Perhaps the world Geroe had left so abruptly was always with her. Perhaps she was never entirely reconciled with its loss. Stanley Gold writes sensitively of Geroe’s sadness: ‘She brought with her a great love of psychoanalysis and in particular its application to the education and development of children, and a life-long nostalgia for the early days of the psychoanalytic movement with its camaraderie and intellectual radicalism’. Perhaps a legacy of her European life was  her belief that people at all levels of the community should have the opportunity to ‘explore psychoanalysis as a meaningful intellectual and philosophical discipline and to develop techniques for its application within society’.(Meanjin 1983).

REFERENCES:

Stanley Gold, ‘The Early History’, Meanjin, 3/1983, pp. 342-351

Clara Lazar Geroe, ‘A Reluctant Immigrant’ ( from an interview with Douglas Kirsner compiled by Judith Brett), Meanjin, 3/1983, pp. 352-357.

Joy Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes, A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia , UNSW Press, 2005.

Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Disaster, London, Harper Press, 2006.

Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews: 1933-1948: British immigration Policy and the Holocaust, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Daniel Snowman, The Hitler migres: The Cultural Impact on Britain of Refugees from Nazism, London, Chatto and Windus, 2002.

Bernard Wasserstein, On The Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War. New York, Simon and Schuster, 2012.

June 2023
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« May    

Archives

  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • November 2022
  • February 2022
  • June 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • August 2020
  • June 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • January 2018
  • September 2017
  • December 2016
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • March 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s Archive work Australian History Australian Women in Psychoanalysis Australian Women Writers Book Reviews Book Reviews Clara Geroe Conferences and Lectures Emigres Feminism Historical research historical source material History of Child Guidance John Springthorpe Lay analysis lectures Narrative and Memoir Newspaper reportage Press Psychiatry seminars Susan Isaacs the psychoanalytic process War Neurosis western australia WW2

Recent Posts

  • Freud Conference 2023: Indigenous voices- Psychoanalytic listening 17 June 2023 ( in person and online)
  • “TROVE” the National Library of Australia’s jewel, has been saved!!!
  • Clara Lazar Geroe’s contribtion: Fetschrift for Ferenczi: “Soul analysis studies. Theses on the main questions of psychoanalysis by Members of the Hungarian psychoanalytical association” Edited by Sigmund Freud, 1933

The Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2017

Blogroll

  • WordPress.com News
  • Psychotherapy Matters

Online Journals

  • Psychoanalysis Downunder

Organisations

  • http://www.psychoanalysis.asn.au/
  • Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis
  • New South Wales Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
  • Victorian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists
  • Australian Psychoanalytic Society
  • Australian Association of Group Psychotherapists

Resources

  • Stanford Encycopaedia of Philosophy
  • Sigmund Freud Archives
  • Charles Darwin – Complete Works
  • National Library of Australia

The Australian Scene - History

  • Australian Dictionary of Biography
  • International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 203 other subscribers

Copyright

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.

Comments, Suggestions, Ideas and Other Matters

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.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Freud in Oceania
    • Join 80 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Freud in Oceania
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar