S. J. R. De Monchy—1893-1969

de Monchy was born on 7 April 1893, in Rotterdam, and was the eldest of four sons of a merchant belonging to a well-known family. He spent his youth in Rotterdam, and studied medicine first in Leiden and then in Amsterdam. After taking his degree he worked in neurology and psychiatry under Professor K. Herman Bouman, together with Rümke, and began a practice as a specialist in Rotterdam, concentrating, as his publications to 1932 indicate, on neurology. In 1920 he had met Freud at the 3rd International Psycho-Analytical Association Congress at The Hague.

In 1921 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for a thesis entitled De Ontlediging van het Psychische Symptomenbeeld bij Arterio-Sklerosis Cerbri (The Disintegration of the Mental Symptoms in Cerebral Arteriosclerosis), and in 1922 became a member of the Dutch Psycho-Analytical Association, which had been founded in 1917. He was analysed by Freud in 1929–30 and 1932–33. After his return to Rotterdam there was a distinct shift in his practice from neurology to psychoanalysis, although he never gave up his neurological work.

In 1933 he became Chairman of the Dutch Association, a position which he was to occupy for some time in a stormy period of deep division and repeated conflicts, unification being reached, under his chairmanship, in 1938. Early in that year he had gone to Vienna to discuss these problems with Freud.

After 1941 the Association could not function under the German occupation, but de Monchy and the vice-chairman kept it formally in existence in order to facilitate its revival.

In 1943 he escaped to Sweden with his Swedish wife, taking with him information collected by the resistance movement for the Dutch Government in exile. In Sweden he served at the Netherlands Embassy as physician for Dutch refugees, established a psychoanalytical practice in Stockholm, stimulated the Swedish Association to new activity, and even became its Chairman. After the death of his wife he remarried and in 1952