In Memoriam

Antonia Wenkart, after a brief illness, passed away on September 21, 1985. She was a member of The Advisory Board of The Journal and a collaborator in several other capacities for many years. She was also a training and supervising analyst at The American Institute for Psychoanalysis, and for many years a member of the faculty at New York University Medical Center.

Dr. Wenkart was born in Poland the youngest of five daughters. Somehow her early life gave her the courage and endurance to face adversity and prejudice. She remembered her childhood as happy. Later the family moved to Vienna and she applied to medical school. It was not easy in those days for a woman to be admitted to medicine, but it was even harder for an alien Jewish woman. She was rejected, she appealed, and after a year of struggle she was finally accepted.

At the University, Dr. Wenkart met her future husband, Simon Wenkart, a sensitive and kind man. He was interested in Freud, and it was he who influenced her to attend Freud's lectures. Dr. Wenkart practiced as a pediatrician first, but soon she became interested in psychoanalysis. She became closer to Alfred Adler than to Freud and was a witness to their split.

After coming to the United States in 1940, she discovered Karen Horney who became her supervisor while on analytic training which she started in 1944; Harold Kelman was her analyst.

Besides bringing together Zen Buddhists and analysts of the Horney group, Antonia Wenkart brought many unique contributions to the people she taught and trained throughout 40 years of psychoanalytic activity. She was one of the first to be involved in existential analysis, and her depth went further into philosophy, politics, and poetry. She herself had a dramatic flair which she did not hesitate to use as an analyst. An onomatopoeic sound, a whisper, a lament, or a laugh were the most powerful tools in her interpretations. As a member of the Faculty Council of the Institute, Antonia Wenkart also contributed her un