Psychotherapy in Old Vienna and New York: Cultural Comparisons

Psychotherapies came from Old Vienna to New York. As with many other innovations originating in Vienna, the new psychologies had not achieved popularity in the Imperial City itself. By contrast, the reception given in the United States to Freud's observations and to the contributions of his various Viennese followers, revisionists, and dissidents, such as W. Stekel, P. Federn, F. Wittels, H. Sachs, W. Reich, O. Rank, T. Reik, and others, leave one with a surprising impression.* Hardly any other New Wave in science in this century has enjoyed such popular attention as psychoanalytic thought. It is a familiar topic in religious debates, legal practice, school methods, industrial plants, and tests for employment purposes.11 As often remarked, psychoanalysis has been influencing many disciplines, such as pedagogy, anthropology, sociology, criminology, and medicine, and has pervaded the whole of literature.

The overly enthusiastic and comparatively rapid acceptance of psychoanalysis is suspicious. Freud warned that where reception is too facile the possibility of eventual lapse of interest is equally easy. Freud's concepts and word coinage became so much a part of everyday thinking and language that most people are not even aware of their one-time novelty. This state of affairs is the more astonishing11 if one considers Freud's personal makeup, including specifically his cultural background in Vienna which, in conjunction with his genius, started him on his road of exploration and provided him with an atmosphere conducive to his work.13