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In his paper, “On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” Freud describes the beginning of the first psychoanalytic society.
From the year 1902 onwards, a number of young medical men gathered round me with the expressed intention of learning, practicing, and spreading knowledge of psychoanalysis. The stimulus came from a colleague who had himself experienced the beneficial effect of analytic therapy. Regular meetings were held on certain evenings at my house; discussions were arranged according to certain rules; the guests endeavored to orient themselves in this new and strange field of research and to interest others in it.6
Although Freud had every reason to be satisfied, and did everything possible to impart to others his own knowledge and experiences, he refers to the “inauspicious circumstances” which estranged him inwardly from the group. He was not able to succeed in establishing among the members those friendly relations that are necessary among individuals who are engaged in the same difficult work nor could he “crush out the disputes about priority for which there were many opportunities under these conditions of work in common.” Freud's statement of that “the difficulties in the way of instructing beginners in the practice of psychoanalysis, which are quite particularly great and responsible for much in the present dissensions among us,” is as valid today as it was fifty years ago.
The secessions and dissensions which have permeated the psychoanalytic