Monday and Tuesday afternoons there were plenary sessions devoted to the theme of the Congress: Aggression. This will be described in a separate report.
The Deputy-Mayor greeted the Congress participants at a Reception in the City Hall. In his response Dr. Rangell pointed out that the presence of Anna Freud was a bit of history taking place in this Hall, where so many historical events had taken place.
In addition to the Freud Gesellschaft and the Freud Museum, through which the Austrian Government expressed its desire to bring about a reconciliation with psychoanalysis, I want to report on another less well known development which might be of great importance for the development of psychoanalysis in Vienna.
For the first time a way has been found for a working arrangement between academic psychiatry (Department of Psychiatry, Vienna University) and psychoanalysis. The Department of Neuropsychiatry has been divided into two separate and independent departments; simultaneously, within the newly-established Department of Psychiatry, a Division of Psychotherapy and Depth-Psychology (“Tiefenpsychologie” is the euphemism for psychoanalysis) has been set up. The person in charge of this Division (and for whom it was established) is a full professor in the Department of Psychiatry and is a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (Dr. Hans Strotzka).
Most tourists coming to Vienna lose no time in visiting some or all of the famous pastry shops — and with good reason. But how many of them know of the Viennese version of the frankfurter stand? There are not too many of them, and in addition, as we were advised by a taxi-driver connoisseur, the quality and taste of the wares sold in these “Wuerschtel” stands varies. Three to six inches of sausage with the heel of black bread has been enjoyed as a lunch or after-theater snack for generations.
For the “Heurigen,” the new wine for which Vienna is famous, the Congress had on Friday evening taken over a whole village, Gumpoldskirchen, half hour by bus from the City. We had the pleasure of sitting with the applicants and candidates for the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. The candidates are a young and lively group. The girls in simple dresses and the men with luxurious beards are in appearance similar to our own students — with one difference: they are much younger. They are all medical students in their clinical years, who were accepted by the Vienna Institute and now have to wait until a training analyst becomes available. They had attended the meetings of the Congress and were eager to discuss the issues.
On the last day, Saturday, this most unusual Congress drew to a close with a visit to the Freud Museum.