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This book tells two compelling psychoanalytic stories. The first concerns the free clinics set up by the European psychoanalytic societies in the early days of the movement. In Danto's narrative, Freud led the way when he wrote:
It is possible to foresee that the conscience of society will awake and remind it that the poor man should have just as much right to assistance for his mind as he now has to the life-saving help offered by surgery; … institutions and out-patient clinics will be appointed, so that men … women … children … may be made capable … of efficient work. Such treatments will be free.
Between 1920 and 1938, analysts responded to Freud's call by instituting centers offering free treatment in 10 cities, including Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and London, in seven countries. Danto puts this development in historical context. At the end of World War I, the Hapsburg Empire had fallen and Vienna was part of the democratic Weimar Republic. The government of the city of Vienna, ‘Red Vienna’ as it was called, was strongly committed to social services, including free health care, for all its citizens. There was a strong feminist movement, with women winning the right to vote. Freud, along with Max Eitingon, Sandor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich and Ernst Simmel among others, brought the generous spirit of the time into the psychoanalytic movement, starting free clinics including the Poliklinik in Berlin and the Ambulatorium in Vienna, where analysts, from the most junior to the most senior, took on at least one free case and/or dedicated a part of their income from private practice to the maintenance of the clinic. Even the most senior analysts saw one-fifth of their patients free, according to Danto. Sigmund Freud saw some of his own patients without charge.
Meanwhile, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Erik Erikson, Peter Blos, August Aichhorn and others were bringing psychoanalytic principles into experiments in education, especially early childhood educati