The Late Dr Imre Hermann

DEAR DR HAYLEY,

I was saddened to read of the death of Dr Imre Hermann in the last number of the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis. The news of Dr Hermann's death brought back memories of my association with him during several years in the late 1960's and early '70's. It was during these years that I carried on a frequent and quite voluminous correspondence with Dr Hermann. Through Dr Hermann's friend and colleague, Dr Sandor Feldman, who himself died twelve years ago, I was persuaded to prepare a translation of Dr Hermann's monograph 'Method in Psychoanalysis', from German into English. Dr Hermann provided me with a stream of revisions and emendations of that work, first published in German in 1933 and since, in a second edition, also in German in 1963. Although I completed my translation, including Dr Hermann's corrections, I could not get any of our psychoanalytic publishing houses to accept it and finally gave up the attempt. I do not believe it was ever published in English, though the obituary seems to indicate that. The second edition was a German language version. I did correspond with Dr Sutherland about this matter during his tenure as editor, pointing out to him that a very favourable review of the second edition of 'method' contained the statement that Dr Hermann's work was not translatable but that I had indeed a translation at hand. Even though Dr Sutherland expressed interest and reviewed the manuscript of my translation, nothing ever came of it.

I met Dr Hermann on one occasion about fifteen years ago during I believe, his first and only visit to the United States. Dr Feldman asked me at that time to join him and a few other colleagues in New York to meet Dr Hermann. As a footnote to the history of psychoanalysis, it is worthwhile to put on record belatedly the occurrence of the meeting and those present: Dr Robert Bak, Dr Sandor Lorand, Dr Andrew Peto, Dr Sandor Feldman, Dr Otto Thaler—all meeting with Dr Imre Hermann. It was a wa