You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Edith Jacobson was a major figure in American psychoanalysis (see Kronold, 1980; Fenichel, 1998, pp. 1954–1955; Thompson, 2002). After beginning her analytic career in Germany, she emigrated to the United States in 1938 and became a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1941. From 1954 until 1956 she served as the society's president. She was elected training analyst and instructor of the New York Institute in 1944, entered the Educational Committee in 1954, and was highly respected in all these functions. Her ongoing seminar on depression was legendary.
While Jacobson's name is generally linked to American ego-psychology (Bergmann, 2000), some authors have claimed her work for an American tradition of object relations theory (Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983). Her book The Self and the Object World (1964) was considered the most comprehensive statement about normal development from birth to adolescence in its time, attempting to integrate drive theory with structural and object relations theory (Thompson, 2002). Jacobson enriched psychoanalytic metapsychology, proposing significant changes to Freud's model of the mind concerning drives, affects, ego, and self. Moreover, she is acknowledged as an authority on the psychology and treatment of depression and depressive conditions (1971). She also worked with psychotic patients (1967).
Those who take an interest in the history of psychoanalysis are aware of Jacobson's influential career in the United States. As to her earlier experience, the one fact they would tend to know is that Jacobson was imprisoned by the Nazis because of her support of a leftist resistance organization (see Brecht et al., , pp. 126–131; Fenichel, 1998).