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Reply to the letter of H.-M. Lohmann concerning the report by Evelyn Heintges.
H.-M. Lohmann, my former assistant, is now—as a protégé of M. Mitscherlich-Nielsen, our former co-editor—managing himself the editorial office of the German psychoanalytic monthly Psyche. In May 1993 he sent a letter to Free Associations, in order “to correct and supplement” the report Evelyn Heintges had published as information for British readers about the struggle for Psyche (that took place at the turn of the years 1991/92).1 Mr. Lohmann is the main beneficiary—and has been the main cause—of the conflict among the three editors, to whom Alexander Mitscherlich had handed over his journal in 1982: I myself, M. Mitscherlich-Nielsen, his wife, and Lutz Rosenkötter, his friend and colleague. Instead of remaining at least silent, Lohmann now offers his own version of the conflict—a story, wherein the main topics remain unsaid. Therefore I think, it's once again my turn “to correct and supplement”—and for this correction I need some more lines than Mr. Lohmann did:
Origin and character of the conflict:
M. Mitscherlich-Nielsen kicked up the row in 1989. She wished to fire the two office secretaries of long standing, whom she suddenly declared to be incompetent. When her two co-editors (myself and L. Rosenkötter), the “majority” of the three-person editorial staff who had to decide over hiring and firing, resisted, she proclaimed, that the (five) advisers of the editorial staff (who had only the status of guests, while Lohmann promotes them by a verbal trick into “the majority of the panel of ‘editors’”) should decide the
question. It soon became clear, that Mitscherlich-Nielsen wished to replace the whole staff of the journal by people of her own choice (who had of course “very good reasons” to give her any support), and to install Mr. L