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First published in Hebrew in 2007, this exemplary work of scholarship is now available to English-language readers. Its author, Eran J. Rolnik,
an Israeli psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and historian, ably combines his knowledge and skill in each of these disciplines to produce a volume so packed with new information and so well written that I strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis.
Delving through heretofore untapped archives in Israel and other countries, Rolnik tells the story of psychoanalysis within the Yeshuv (the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the state of Israel came into being). The cast of characters in this story are generally not well known, with the exceptions of Theodor Herzl and Max Eitingon, yet they all played key roles in bringing psychoanalysis to British-occupied Palestine.
Without Eitingon's immigration to Palestine in 1933, there might not have been such a compelling story. A member of Freud's “secret committee,” Eitingon is remembered for his financial support of psychoanalysis and for having established the Eitingon model of psychoanalytic training, which for better or for worse continues to be generally accepted. Some may also remember him for an exchange of letters in the New York Review of Books in 1988, in which he was accused of being a KGB spy and subsequently defended against this accusation.
Born in Russia to a family of fur traders who moved to Leipzig, Max Eitingon was “perhaps” a distant relative of Leonid Eitingon, a member of Stalin's “killerati” who drove the getaway car following the 1940 murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. However, the alleged KGB connection was never proven. At any rate, the Eitingon family fortune—which was considerable—came from the fur trade. It provided Freud with cigars and other gifts, financed the Berlin Institute (including the work of Freud's son Ernst as its architect), and supported both the polyclinic and the Internationaler Psychoanalytisher Ve