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As a young physician in Vienna I asked myself why was it that in this of all cities so many discoveries in psychology were made and why was it that so many of the participants were of Jewish origin. I could not answer the question then. Today, however, after a long medical career divided between two cultures, I have begun to see the amalgam of Vienna, Jews and psychological discovery in a new light—as an historical entity distinct from our own and with its own Zeitgeist.
Here one cannot but speculate on the almost magic spell which Vienna cast upon great healers of the mind, from Marcus Aurelius, Gall, Mesmer, von Feuchtersleben, Meynert, Krafft-Ebing, to the dramatic era of Breuer, Freud, Adler and the numerous students of the psyche indebted to the genius of Freud. To enumerate some of the outstanding scholars of psychology during that time I name them as they occur to me: Stekel, Federn, Tausk, Rank, Stransky, Potzl, Th. Reik, and then Aichhorn, Gutheil, Hoff, J. Wilder, Eissler, Mahler, E. and R. Sterba, Jekels, Silberer, Wittels, Hitschmann, Hartmann, Dreikurs, Bierer, M. Schur, Alexandra Adler and Anna Freud. And there are many more who began or developed psychological work in this city.
Breuer was the very first to demonstrate a method for the psychological exploration of hysterical symptoms, and he called Freud's attention to this. Contemporary psychiatric therapy grew in great part from the achievements in Vienna. I have in mind the malaria fever cure for general paresis devised by Nobel Laureate Wagner-Jauregg, a truly epochal contribution to the organic approach