Helene Deutsch, M.D.: on Supervised Analysis—Introduction

FROM JUNE 8 UNTIL JUNE 10, 1935 a Joint Conference (the First "Four Countries Conference") was held in Vienna for members of the Hungarian, Vienna, and Italian Psychoanalytic Societies, as well as the Czechoslovakian Study Group.1 The business meeting on "Training Analysis and Control Analyses" was designed exclusively for members of the Hungarian and Viennese Societies. The purpose was to compare and contrast the approach adopted in Budapest, following the lead of Sandor Ferenczi, with that of the Viennese. (That same year the London and Vienna Societies exchanges guest lecturers on the views of Melanie Klein. The matter of supervision was again a special subject at the second Four Countries Conference in May 1937 in Budapest.) A paper by the Hungarian Vilma Kovacs on training and control analysis2 had stimulated the professional debate, and Imre Hermann opened the discussion with the views of "some" Hungarian training analysts. Although Helene Deutsch was scheduled to speak she was unable to attend because of ill health; Anna Freud then read Helene Deutsch's paper on the "principles and practices of the Vienna Society."3

By 1935 Helene Deutsch was long established as one of psychoanalysis's greatest teachers. She had become Director of the Vienna Training Institute in 1924 and served in that capacity until she left for Boston, Mass. in September 1935, where a new institute