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Today's generation of analysts is at risk for forgetting something important which Eissler understood, namely that social activism is an integral part of the analyst .1 From Vienna to Managua, written by Marie Langer in collaboration with Enrique Ginsberg and Jaime del Palacio, is the memoir of a life of dual commitment to revolution and psychoanalysis.
The author, an Austrian-born Argentinian analyst, was the sole woman among the founders of the Argentinian Psychoanalytic Association in 1942. By the time of the second edition in 1964 of Motherhood and Sexuality, Langer's major theoretical work, she was South America's leading female analyst. An examination of this rich and complex life demonstrates, at least for this reviewer, the magnificent process of empowerment. Ideally, psychoanalysis should neither impede nor prevent this process; in fact it should facilitate it.
Born Marie Lisbeth Glas in Vienna in 1910, she was the second of two daughters in an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, Leopold, was a textile manufacturer with progressive social ideas. Her mother, Margareth, had been frustrated because she was not allowed to pursue a higher eduction. Instead, she was required to accompany her invalid mother abroad, eventually contributing to the development of Marie's own interest in psychosomatic medicine.
After marriage, Magareth had settled into a life of leisure in which her only real function was to supervise the servants (although Marie would note that this was interrupted by World War I when she had the greatly appreciated opportunity to engage in volunteer work). Her mother's constricted life must have influenced Marie to become both an analyst and a political activist. Langer always maintained that her mother's preference for Gucki, her older sister, had freed her from a maternal identification,