Willi Hoffer—1897–1967

Dr Willi Hoffer was Editor of this Journal for ten years. He was born in Bohemia in 1897, and after the 1914–18 war studied psychology and biology at the University of Vienna, gaining his Ph.D. in psychology in 1922. His interest in education and in social reform had brought him into active contact and collaboration with the group of psychoanalysts who had gathered round Freud, and he undertook a personal analysis with Herman Nunberg in 1921–22. Hoffer was elected a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. From 1921 to 1924 he was an assistant at the Jewish Institute for Research into Adolescence and Education in Vienna. Afterwards he completed his medical training and in 1929 graduated M.D. from the University of Vienna, later working with Pötzl in the university psychiatric clinic. From 1925 to 1938 he was an instructor in the training course for educationists conducted by the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, and he was also Editor of the Zeitschrift für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik from 1934 to 1935.

In 1938, due largely to personal intervention by British colleagues, permission was granted for the Freud family and their close associates to enter Britain, and Hoffer, with his wife Hedwig, came to London. Some of his Viennese colleagues later moved on to the United States, but the Hoffers were among those who remained with the Freud family in London, and continued as active members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. In 1943 Hoffer obtained the Scottish triple qualification, and thereafter he took an increasingly active part in the work of the Society.

During the 1939–45 war he shared in the work of the Hampstead nurseries, run by Anna Freud, and later became consultant to the Hampstead child-therapy course and clinic. In 1947 he became Co-Editor and in 1949 Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. He was elected President of the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1959 and he was re-elected during the following two year