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I welcome the publication of these papers by Paula Heimann which have been put together by Margret Tonnesmann. Her introduction to the papers focuses on Paula Heimann’s theoretical and clinical approaches to her work as a psychoanalyst and gives the reader a useful commentary on the development of her many contributions to psychoanalysis.
In this introductory memoir I have been asked to delineate her background and the events that most influenced her writings and her contributions to psychoanalysis. I have drawn not only on my personal knowledge of Paula Heimann as a warm, encouraging, and creative colleague, but also on information which she gave me when I interviewed her in 1974 in the course of my researches into the history of the British Psycho- Analytical Society.
Paula Heimann was born in 1899 in Danzig and died in 1982 in London. Both her parents were Russian and they had four children. The third child, a girl, died, and then came Paula. She always felt she had been conceived as a replacement for this child and that her mother was very depressed when she was born. She felt she had to comfort and look after her mother most of her childhood. Her mother was, however, very appreciative and grateful to her daughter for her support. This family situation is important in the context of her later analytic and extra-analytic experiences.
Paula Heimann did her medical and psychiatric training in a number of German universities, which was the practice in Germany at that time. During her medical training she married her husband, who was a specialist in internal medicine, and in 1925 their only daughter, Mirza, was born. They finally settled in Berlin. There she became interested in treating psychiatric patients, and then a colleague asked her why she did not think of training as a psychoanalyst. She applied to do so in 1928 and she was interviewed and accepted by Max Eitingon, President of the Berlin Society. He sent her to Theodor Reik for analysis, who had recently moved