The history of the psychoanalytic movement — John Shaqi
The history of the psychoanalytic movementFreud, Sigmund
History
The history of the psychoanalytic movement
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis -- History
In the years after 1907, which followed the union of the schools of
Vienna and Zürich, psychoanalysis received that extraordinary impetus in
which it still finds itself today. This is positively attested by the
spread of psychoanalytic literature and the increase in the number of
doctors who desire to practice or learn it, also by the mass of attacks
upon it by congresses and learned societies. It has wandered into the
most distant countries, it everywhere shocked psychiatrists, and has
gained the attention of the cultured laity and workers in other
scientific fields. Havelock Ellis, who has followed its development with
sympathy without ever calling himself its adherent, wrote, in 1911, in a
paper for the Australasian Medical Congress: “Freud’s psychoanalysis is
now championed and carried out not only in Austria and in Switzerland,
but in the United States, in England, India, Canada, and, I doubt not,
in Australasia.”[5] A doctor from Chile (probably a German) appeared at
the International Congress in Buenos Ayres, in 1910, and spoke on behalf
of the existence of infantile sexuality and praised the results of
psychoanalytic therapy in obsessions.[6] An English neurologist in
Central India informed me through a distinguished colleague who came to
Europe, that the cases of Mohammedan Indians on whom he had practiced
analysis showed no other etiology of their neuroses than our European
patients.
The introduction of psychoanalysis into North America took place under
particularly glorious auspices. In the autumn of 1909, Jung and myself
were invited by President Stanley Hall, of Clark University, to take
part in the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the opening of
Clark University, by giving some lectures in German. We found, to our
great astonishment, that the unprejudiced men of that small but
respected pedagogic-philosophical university knew all the psychoanalytic
writings and had honored them in their lectures to their students. Thus
even in prudish America one could, at least in academic circles, discuss
freely and treat scientifically all those things that are regarded as
offensive in life. The five lectures that I improvised at Worcester then
appeared in English in the American Journal of Psychology; later on they
were printed in German under the title, “Über Psychoanalyse.” Jung
lectured on diagnostic association studies and on “conflicts in the
psychic life of the child.” We were rewarded for it with the honorary
degree of LL.D. During this week of celebration at Worcester,
psychoanalysis was represented by five persons. Besides Jung and myself
there were Ferenczi, who had joined me as travelling-companion, Ernest
Jones, then of Toronto University (Canada), now in London, and A. A.
Brill, who was already practising psychoanalysis in New York.
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