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Dorothy Burlingham would have been pleased as well as surprised at this meeting. During her lifetime she was much too modest to either demand or expect adequate recognition for her work.
Colleagues who have not known her well may be under the misapprehension that her interest in and work for psychoanalysis began here in England. In fact, this was not the case. Whatever she did here was preceded by a long active period in Vienna of which her activities here were no more than a continuation. There are not many people alive now, or present here, who can report on this, a fact which is my own justification for claiming to be one of the reporters today.
Dorothy Burlingham came to Vienna in 1925 and remained there until 1938: thirteen years which became decisive for her further life. She was at the time a young woman of 34, separated but not divorced from her husband, mother of four young children whom she protected from having to grow up in the shadow of the severe illness of their father. What she expected from psychoanalysis in Vienna was a new interest for herself as well as active help in the upbringing of her children.
She began her personal analysis with Theodor Reik and when he, after a year or two, moved from Vienna to Berlin, she changed over to my father. This treatment lasted a considerable time and, very gradually, developed into a training analysis which led to her entry into the newly opened Vienna Institute. As a candidate in good standing, she became in due time a Member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. It may be of interest at this point to reflect that none of this could have happened if conditions of acceptance had been then what they are now: her application would have been rejected out of hand on the basis of insufficient professional credentials or evidence of scientific involvement. If, with this in mind, you listen to the ensuing survey of her psychoanalytical achievements, you may well wonder whether our present selection procedures a