Among the many little known accomplishments of the American Psychoanalytic Association is the help given to individuals from East European countries with an interest in psychoanalysis who apply for asylum in the United States.
One such individual is Dr. Jan Roda, a Czech national of the Jewish faith, who sought asylum because of his professional view on psychiatry and his religious heritage. In his request he noted that psychiatry in Czechoslovakia follows the “Pavlovian—Materialist school, which diagnoses all forms of mental illness in terms of chemical imbalance or other material defects. To discuss an individual personality in terms of a dynamic theory of development is unheard of. Either one behaves in society or they do not; they fit in or they do not. It is from this premise that Soviet psychiatrists label political dissidents ‘insane’ when they fail to toe the line.”
Dr. Roda wrote that his pursuits of literature and information about Freudian psychoanalysis alienated him from the Czech authorities and the Czech medical establishment. He said, “all I wanted to do was learn about an alternative approach for treatment of the mentally insane, but with each step forward I took two steps back until I was pushed out of the hospital altogether.”
He was punished by being transferred from his job on an alcoholic ward to the art faculty of a provincial university where he was to do research on the “material substance of creativity.” Subsequently he managed to leave the country and apply for asylum in the United States.
When Dr. Edward D. Joseph, President-Elect of the American at the time, learned of Dr. Roda's plight from Louis Levy of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, he wrote a strong letter in his behalf. In the letter, Dr. Joseph drew on his experience as former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He noted that many psychoanalysts had written to him. Many described their inability to practice the medical specialty for which they had been trained because of the restrictions placed upon them … and expressed the hope of continuing to receive appropriate scientific journals such as the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, but asked that they be sent to different addresses at different times so that no one individual would be receiving them constantly, thereby drawing attention to himself as having contact with the West.
Dr. Joseph observed that psychoanalytic material was often not delivered or was returned to the sender in the West. He added, “I can believe him when he writes that he was reading, sub-rosa, literature from the West at some risk to himself.”
Dr. Joseph added, “The general tenor of official psychiatry in Eastern European countries is anti-Freudian and anti-individualistic, which is in part the essence of the psychoanalytic approach. As psychoanalysts, we are interested in the problems and concerns of the individual and of his dealing with his problems within himself which may or may not make him more or less conforming to the mores of the society in which he lives. For these reasons Freudian and psychoanalytic concepts have not been considered acceptable in many of the Eastern European countries.”
As a result of Dr. Joseph's letter and the work of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Dr. Roda's application for asylum was approved and recently he has entered the United States. Mr. Levy of the Aid Society wrote, “This approval was due, in no small degree, to the information which you [Dr. Joseph] so generously provided.”