Edith Kurzweil
HUNGARIAN AND AMERICAN
PSYCHOANALYSIS
Psychoanalysis might not be what it is today if Freud had
listened to Sandor Ferenczi rather that Karl Abraham, if he had
focused more on "experiential" rather that "conceptual" understand–
ing, and if he had not taken such a strong stand against the "neo–
Hungarian," Melanie Klein. Had Freud agreed that children's early
traumatic experiences might be as decisive as, or even more decisive
than the Oedipus complex in mental development around the age of
five years, psychoanalysis might have taken a totally different intel–
lectual path.
This possibility was alluded to more than once during the first
visit to the United States in over fifty years by Budapest Freudians,
all of whom are members of the Hungarian psychoanalytic and med–
ical establishments, at a conference on November 12, 1988-spon–
sored by the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Train–
ing and Research (CUCPT&R),
Partisan Review
and the Gradu–
ate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. Of course,
Gyorgy Hidas, training analyst and the leading member of the Bud–
apest Society for Psychoanalysis which was reestablished in 1980,
reminded us that in 1926 Ferenczi himself had lectured at the New
School, and I originally was able to interest the Columbia University
psychoanalysts because their institute had been founded by yet
another Hungarian, Sandor Rado. But the event proved to be more
than an historical and emotional occasion: the seven Hungarians,
who like all their compatriots cannot easily go abroad except when a
grant facilitates an invitation, debated issues of psychoanalytic
theory and history, clinical techniques and cases with America's
leading psychoanalysts. And in their spare time, they took in New
York - from Riverdale to Staten Island, Birdland to the Village
Vanguard, Park Avenue splendor to Harlem squalor; they admired
the treasures at most of our museums (so much better than repro–
ductions); and they walked to admire our skyscrapers (so much
larger and more imposing than in the movies). Their meetings with
the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and with the psychoanalysts at
the Austin Riggs Center, organized by Dr. Lewis Kirshner and in–
troduced by Dr. Sanford Gifford, provided them with yet other ex-
