‘Heresy’

Dear Sir,

I feel impelled to comment on Nathan M. Kravis's review (Int. J. Psychoanal., 78: 196-199) of Heresy: Sándor Rado and the Psychoanalytic Movement by Paul Roazen and Bluma Swerdloff. Sándor Rado was indeed an important yet relatively neglected figure in the history of psychoanalysis. Potential readers might be dissuaded by this review from learning more about him and this would be unfortunate.

In the course of preparing a book about Ruth Easser, one of Sándor Rado's first Columbia graduates, I interviewed over thirty psychoanalysts who were Rado's colleagues and students. I came to know something about how those who knew or were influenced by him at Columbia regarded this man. Perhaps, as a result, my reading of this small piece of psychoanalytic history differs greatly from that of Nathan Kravis. First it seems important to be clear about what this book is and what it is not. Swerdloff in her introduction comments that ‘this … is not a biography of Rado, nor an exposition of his significant contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice. It is also not a carefully researched tract’ (p. viii). Kravis appears to have over read this slim volume expecting, perhaps, an objective biography or a systematic exposition of Rado's theories. I read this book as a thoughtful and evenly balanced annotated oral history—the subjective, highly personal story of a psychoanalyst whose significant contributions have been relatively unrecognized and are now only beginning to be reappraised (e.g. C. Tomlinson ‘Sándor Rado and Adolf Meyer: a nodal point in American psychiatry and psychoanalysis’. Int. J. Psychoanal., 77: 963-982). It is this aspect that Kravis's review fails to convey and therefore can be misleading in its emphasis.

To object to ‘Heresy’ in the title as metaphorical or ironical and to the statement that ‘Rado has been “effectively written out of psychoanalytic history’” as a ‘bizarre act’ misrepresents two realities. There can be little doubt that,