American Women Psychoanalysts 1911-1941

Many gifted and unusual women have been drawn to psychoanalysis. Indeed it can be argued that this fact constitutes one of the most significant elements of Freud's intellectual legacy: the creation of a theory and therapy that afforded women, as theorists and therapists, opportunities to undertake meaningful work among whose satisfactions was the knowledge that their theoretical and clinical investigations continually reshaped and refined psychoanalysis (Thompson, 1987). The contributions and lives of many first- and second-generation European women analysts—among them Lou Andreas-Salomé, Sabina Spielrein, Marie Bonaparte, Helene Deutsch, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, and Joan Riviere—have been the subject of both scholarly and popular interest.1 By contrast, the lives and careers of American women analysts are not as well known or appreciated. This essay represents an initial contribution to rectifying this neglect by sketching in broad strokes a portrait of the 58 American women who became psychoanalysts between 1911 and 1941. A consideration of their institutional, clinical, and theoretical contributions will both encourage an appreciation of their individual achievements and demonstrate that psychoanalysis offered a wide range of women, with distinctive temperaments, interests, and talents, an opportunity to pursue gratifying work. Individual portraits encompassing the personal histories and careers of Helen Ross, Martha Wolfenstein, Elizabeth Zetzel, and Phyllis Greenacre illustrate this last point.

In the 30-year period from 1911 to 1941, there are three distinct, if overlapping, stages in the development of psychoanalysis in the United States. During