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to literature , music, and film criticism. We even saw the classical
film by Pabst (allegedly supervised by Karl Abraham in the early
1920s), whose naive psychoanalyst and even more naive patient had
us all laughing.
But the most interesting aspect of the meeting was the presence
of seven Hungarian and six Yugoslav psychoanalysts . The latter told
us how Freud's ideas are being applied in a number of general and
mental hospitals , in outpatient clinics , and - minimally - in private
practice . Clearly, the Yugoslavs aim to cure symptoms rather than
reach the unconscious , with a "dynamic approach" that supplements
"narcoanalysis, hypnotic sessions and other therapies." Many of their
hospital therapists , however, were thought to be badly trained, and
"to project their own conflicts onto their patients ." In other words , our
own classical Freudians might lump them all with the "wild analysts."
But while so-called wild analysis in America primarily exists outside
the establishment, it apparently is within it in Yugoslavia. The Hun–
garians, on the other hand, officially have reinstated Freudian psy–
choanalysis. (It had been disbanded in 1949 at the height of the "cult
of personality ." ) Now, they have twenty-five psychoanalysts and fif–
teen candidates, all of whom are affiliated loosely with the Interna–
tional Psychoanalytic Association . Although the Hungarians must
work for the state and in a psychiatric setting, they are allowed to
have private patients in psychoanalysis . According to Gyoergy Hidas ,
the president of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society, they were
fortunate that Imre Hermann (a disciple of Ferenczi) went into "in–
ternal emigration ," and thus managed to train a handful of psycho–
analysts. Now, it seems, the government values their work. All in
all , the Hungarians not only represented but glorified the so-called
Budapest School , which among others fathered the influential English
analysts Melanie Klein and Michael Balint.
A few days later, Frankfurt celebrated the twenty-fifth anniver–
sary of its Sigmund-Freud-Institut. Established in 1960 by Alexander
Mitscherlich , its mission was twofold : to do research into psychoso–
matic medicine and into psychosocial mechanisms, by having psy–
choanalysts and sociologists plumb the depths of the German psyche,
and thus to learn how to "overcome" its Fascist past. Whether or not
this mission was accomplished mattered less at this meeting than did
the fact that Frankfurt, once again, had a new (and more psychoana–
lytically oriented) variant of the former Frankfurt School. To the out–
side world, the fact that the French psychoanalysts
J
anine Chasseguet–
Smirgel and Bela Grunberger (a former Hungarian and disciple of
