Preface to Ten Years of the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Institute1

The following pages describe the founding and achievements of the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Institute, to which are allotted three important functions within the psycho-analytic movement. First, it endeavours to make our therapy accessible to the great multitude who suffer under their neuroses no less than the wealthy, but who are not in a position to meet the cost of their treatment. Secondly, it seeks to provide a centre at which analysis can be taught theoretically and at which the experience of older analysts can be handed on to pupils who are anxious to learn. And lastly, it aims at perfecting our knowledge of neurotic illnesses and our therapeutic technique by applying them and testing them under fresh conditions.

An Institute of this kind was indispensable; but we should have waited in vain for assistance from the State or interest from the University in its foundation. Here the energy and self-sacrifice of an individual analyst took the initiative. Ten years ago, Dr. Max Eitingon, now President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, created an Institute such as this from his own resources, and has since then maintained and directed it by his own efforts. This Report on the first decade of the Berlin Institute is a tribute to its creator and director—an attempt to render him public thanks. Everyone who, in whatever sense, has a share in psycho-analysis will unite in thus thanking him.