Tribute to Dr. Theodor Reik

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen:

I feel highly honored to be your guest and to be permitted to say a few words in memory of my late friend, Dr. Theodor Reik.

I am afraid that the main reason for appearing to deserve the privilege of speaking today is the fact that I always liked Reik very much. Unfortunately my own scientific qualifications are too scanty to evaluate properly Reik's contributions to the still virginal science of psychoanalysis.

Recalling Reik's many papers and books one cannot avoid the humiliating feeling of the embarras de richesse for which he is responsible. Fortunately you are familiar with all his fascinating writings and realize that we owe him gratitude, not only for the books he wrote but also for the book which Freud wrote about lay analysis.

I met Dr. Reik in Vienna in 1924 after I had enrolled in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Institute. He was at this time a senior teacher, admired and envied by everybody. He was witty, charming and seductive—a man who knew his value and who objected to hiding his assets. Reik did not parade around covered by Emperor's clothes. Not satisfied to repeat what he had learned from Freud, he remained to his death rerum novarum cupidus.

While Reik did not object to the Freudian concept of the repetition compulsion, as did some of Freud's pupils, he did not practice it. He preferred to concentrate on discoveries of the unknown despite his knowledge that these discoveries mobilized resistance from colleagues.

Freud once said that one should carefully clean the microscope one is using before looking through it, but he warned of those who spend their whole life cleaning the instrument. Reik did look and he wrote about what he saw.

The resistance of Reik's colleagues in Vienna increased, and he went to Berlin. He couldn't remain there because of Hitler, he fled to Holland, he had to flee again, went to London, and finally he settled in New York.