Arlene Heyman: Where were you in 1939 when Freud died?
Richard Sterba: I was already established in Detroit. I had come from Vienna to Switzerland and finally to Detroit in early 1939. I wrote a letter to Freud from Switzerland telling him my plans and he wrote back, “My best wishes for your migration and arrival. Your faithful Freud.” Meine herzlichsten Wuensche fuer Wanderung und Ankunft. Ihr getreuer Freud. I received the letter three days after I wrote him. This was in January 1939.
Heyman: Were you close to Freud?
Sterba: Not very close. I was a disciple.
Heyman: I'm sure you were aware at the time of how ill he was. How did you first hear that he had died?
Sterba: Max Schur first told me. He telephoned me. We were very good friends, Max Schur and I. He and his wife and children spent a summer near us at our home in Gmunden, in upper Austria. At the time I heard of Freud's death I belonged to the Chicago Institute. They had a memorial session in Chicago and I went there. Roy Grinker spoke. He was very sarcastic. He made a mockery of Freud's dog. Freud insisted that the dog be always present in the sessions. Roy Grinker had started an analysis with Freud and Freud had died and Grinker had a strong negative transference. I spoke myself at the memorial session. I spoke of my concern for the future of psychoanalysis without Freud. Freud was so much the leader.
Heyman: It must have been unpleasant listening to him talk about Freud's dog.
Sterba: I was scandalized.
Heyman: Who else spoke?
Sterba: George Mohr spoke. He had been a student in Vienna
Heyman: In Austria at that time in 1938 things were chaotic.
Sterba: Yes, but I was not Jewish, neither my wife nor I.
Heyman: It was easier for you to get out of Austria, not being Jewish.
Sterba: Yes.
Heyman: I know it was hard for Freud to getout Did you need any special intervention?
Sterba: I asked Jones. He wrote me that I should stay in Austria
Heyman: God! Why?
Sterba: He wrote that I should stay in Austria for the memory of psychoanalysis for a happier future. I was very upset, and he was, too. Then I had lunch with him in his home in London. He told me he wanted to send me to South Africa.
Heyman: My God, why?
Sterba: Because they needed training analysts there.
Heyman: But you didn't go there.
Sterba: And I'm glad.
Heyman: You must have felt very strange receiving this letter telling you to stay in Austria. Did he send it to Austria? Where did you receive it?
Sterba: In Gmunden.
Heyman: And did you write him back?
Sterba: Yes. Dr. Carl Mueller-Braunschweig was a Berlin psychoanalyst who also wanted me to stay. He wanted me to stay and take over the Vienna Institute.
Heyman: I assume Mueller-Braunschweig wasn't Jewish either.
Sterba: I don't think so.
Heyman: It would have been quite terrible for you to have stayed, I imagine.
Sterba: Yes.
Dr. Heyman wishes to thank Ms. Myrta Moeller, Dr. Sterba's executive secretary of 34 years, for her generous help in corroborating certain facts for this interview, and in locating supporting material.
Arlene Heyman: Since you're one of the people who knew Freud—
Helen Schur: Well, I didn't know him that well—
Heyman: You didn't? But I remember reading—after all your husband was his physician—
Schur: But you have to think, people always forget that Freud was an old man at that time.
Heyman: How old was he when you first knew him?
Schur: I think he was 72 when my husband became his physician. I would meet him when there were special celebrations, birthday parties and events like that. Or in summertime when he would be in the outskirts of Vienna, then I would go along with my husband. But he didn't socialize—not in that way.
Heyman: What do you mean, not in that way?
Schur: It's not that you went in and out of his house. He was a working man, an old working man. I don't know how it was, say, with your parents, even your doctors. You don't very much socialize with your doctor, I would presume. I've been interviewed so many times and it's interesting the kinds of thoughts people have about how much contact one really had …
Heyman: Are you saying it was more ceremonial in a certain way?
Schur: No, it was a bit more formal. There was a party and he was very polite. Let's say the seventy-fifth birthday party and the eightieth birthday and maybe others in between and I would go there and wish him a happy birthday along with a lot of other people. We would exchange a certain politeness. But this is how far it would go.
Heyman: Was that something particular about Freud, or was it the custom of the time, or do you think it was his age?
Schur: I think it had mainly to do with his age.
Heyman: Do you think it had to do with his illness?
Schur: It had a bit of course to do with the illness, but you have to think maybe in a person's late seventies—I do not know how many people in their seventies you visit famous or not famous … Of course people always wanted to meet Freud. So when they were permitted to go see him even for minutes, then those people were gratified. They would say, I bring you greetings from this and that city. Let's say they might exchange two or three sentences. And those people were the chosen ones. Not everybody could go there. In England I was very often in the house. But I think I was much too shy to converse with him. I was in my early twenties. You have to think that this is a man who has been honored by everybody. To whom everyone looks up in a certain way. Besides that, he was old and it was difficult for him to talk. He had always some kind of trouble which you might have read about with his dentures and the prosthesis he had. You must have seen the movies. There are quite a number of him in the last few years—I think one by Ruth Mack Brunswick, and another from The Chicago Institute. So you get an impression of the way he was. He was a rather retiring, rather distant person. He wasn't a really outgoing, vivacious, vibrant person. I think when he was younger he was. But after his big surgery he wasn't that communicative or outgoing. He was very gracious, very polite, very charming.
Schur: In England. We had come from Vienna to London just shortly after Freud arrived [Dr. Max Schur needed an appendectomy and the Schurs were therefore delayed in their departure.] We stayed in London until we could not postpone our [immigration] quota any more. We went for two and a half, maybe three months to America and then back again to London, where we stayed until the death of Freud. We returned to America only after Freud died. So we were in London. If you read, Max Schur's “The Problem of Death in Freud's Writings and Life” my husband had given him the injections, so we had to be in London …”
Heyman: Oh yes, I remember reading that Freud was sad you had to leave. But then of course you came back.
Schur: The first time we went to get the first papers, it was in April of ‘39. Then we went back the beginning of July ‘39. In the beginning of August the war broke out. We had put our children in a boarding school because we didn't want them to have to take part in the massive evacuation which the British were doing for the children. They did it in such a way that nobody knew where the children would be staying. Only when the children arrived at their place, they could then notify the parents where they were. We knew about that plan so we sent our children right away when we came back from America to boarding school.
Heyman: To boarding school where?
Schur: In Westerham, about an hour outside of London
Heyman: And this was because the British were sending the children out of London for their safety, because of the bombing …
Schur: All the children assembled at school and they were sent from school directly to the different places. [It was] fantastically organized.
Heyman: You wanted to avoid that—
Schur: Apparently many people didn't know that [was happening]. I talked to somebody here who was one of the children and she couldn't understand why her mother had done that.
Heyman: So you had your children in a boarding school while you were staying—
Schur: I stayed in London until the war broke out. Then since [the boarding school] was pretty close [to London], I went to that boarding school and they hired me as the nurse of the daughter of the owner, who had TB of the spine. So I was together with the children. It was pretty good. It was about an hour bus ride from London. And I stayed there until Freud died. I went to London once in a while. It wasn't so long. It was from the beginning of August until the end of September.
When asked for his reactions to Freud's death Dr. Stone asked the interviewer to telephone him at his home a few nights later so that he might have time “to give it a chance to come seeping back into my mind…”
Leo Stone: Go ahead. Ask your questions. I can tell you right now all I have to say in about one minute. You know, we have to be honest and not make up fancy stuff. Shall I just tell you?”
Heyman: You want to just tell me, you just tell me. If I can think of anything more to ask, I will.
Stone: As I remember it, the war in Europe had already begun or was beginning. The invasion of Poland and so on. I do think I was at the time more preoccupied with the international situation and the imminence of war than anything else. Now it is a fact, although a fact that would be very difficult to document, that I heard within a few days of Freud's death. Now what were my reactions to it? First of all, I was obviously sad and jolted by the death of a very, very great man and I was genuinely sad about it. There was some feeling of mourning even though he was rather remote from my personal life. Secondly, I did feel that at least, damn it, he was through with all those horrible operations to the jaw and the terrible suffering that characterized the later period of his life. Now all that I know about the broader impact of it was that some of the older Viennese doctors who were already here as emigres or refugees, I can't remember exactly which one, I think possibly Federn, maybe Jekels, but more likely Federn because he was more vocal about such things, were making dire predictions that psychoanalysis was going to fragment in its group and in its intellectual sense with the death of Freud. Honestly, that is all I remember about it. I'm sorry. I wish it were something more fancy.
Heyman: No. To me that's quite moving. That you would have felt he was finished with all that suffering.
Stone: Yes, that I thought of, because I also thought of that before he died. Because he really had one hell of a time. At least that was over. But of course there was a feeling about the loss. And the shock of impact of the death of a very great man was certainly there.
Heyman: Where were you at that time?
Stone: I was in New York City. I had probably returned a few weeks before. I took a vacation in August as many of us did. I usually came home after Labor Day.
Heyman: At that time you must have been a recent graduate.
Stone: In '39 I think I had finished the routine things, the courses and so on, and I think I became a member of the American a year or so later. Because I remember Sam Atkin giving me the card at one of the out-of-town meetings, maybe in Boston, shortly after that. At not too great a distance from that, the Horney-Thompson breakup occurred.
Heyman: (laughs)
Stone: And as a matter of fact it has proved to be a very good institute. Maybe a little more kosher than the kosherest but still a very good one.
Heyman: I appreciate your giving this some thought for me.
Dr. Heyman wishes to thank David Ross, Librarian and Archivist of the A A Brill Library at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, for his extraordinarily good-natured assistance in locating background information and checking a number of references for these interviews.
Sterba: I said I couldn't understand his thinking that I could stay. It took about a year to get an American visa. A friend of a friend got it for us. This was Laura Hobson. She wrote the novel which was made into a famous film, Gentlemen's Agreement with Gregory Peck. In the film Gregory Peck pretends to be Jewish.
Heyman: One other thing: do you remember what Max Schur told you about Freud's death, and how you felt?
Sterba: He said, Freud said it makes no sense. He was only an island of pain in an ocean of indifference.
Heyman: That's what Freud said?
Sterba: Yes. He said that living made no sense any more. Then Max Schur gave him the injection.
Heyman: How did you feel when you heard that Freud died?
Sterba: I felt very sad. I felt a tremendous sense of loss. I mourned at least half a year. I felt a great loss.
Heyman: Let me ask you, at that time, you were in your twenties when you met him. Were you a physician then?
Schur: I was a medical student.
Heyman: And your husband—
Schur: No, my husband was much older than I. He was Freud's physician.
Heyman: Sure, sure. (Joint laughter.) When Freud died your husband was in his early forties, we look in Now at the time that Freud died you were—
Heyman: Do you remember, you probably do remember your reaction at the time to his dying.
Schur: I knew that Freud was dying. I knew how sick he was. I knew that this was going to happen. It didn't come as a shock. One knew how much that man was suffering. It wasn't unexpected whatsoever.
Heyman: Did you speak to your husband about his injecting him in the end?
Schur: It is very hard for me to recall if I knew ahead of time that he was going to do it and when he was going to do it. But it wasn't the first time he had done that—you know, with terminally ill patients where there was no hope. One did not think that one should prolong the suffering, prolong death. So this was not an unusual procedure. It wasn't like in this country. I think now they accept it a bit more.
Heyman: It's touch and go here still whether you face prosecution or not So that was not so unusual you're saying, in Europe at that time?
Schur: It was not so unusual.
Heyman: Do you remember was your husband shaken by this?
Schur: Sure. One has a big emotional investment. All that and being a doctor, knowing that this is the only possible way, still you take the total responsibility. In spite of all that, Freud was dying. Freud was dead. And all this goes against the background of the war in London. Now we are in America far away from a constant fear of an air attack. But then there was the black-out, and then there was the question when you were going to cross the Atlantic to go to America, were you going to be torpedoed. So there was a lot of anxiety of one's own right at that time. I worked in that boarding school of one's own right at that time. I didn't take care only of that patient. I would go on walks with the kids of the boarding school. And we were walking with gas masks. And I thought what do I do, I had about ten kids. How do I go about it quickly with those gas masks. Just to give you the background. So … maybe some of the impact [of Freud's death] was diluted.
Heyman: Of course, of course. Excuse me, let me understand about the gas masks. You'd be walking with a group of children and they were wearing gas masks …
Schur: No, they were wearing the gas masks in cardboard boxes on strings around their necks. The government issued them to everyone. You would have to take the masks out of the cardboard boxes and help the children get them on. These were children between the ages of 5 and 7. It was in the country. We took walks maybe on a footpath. We'd walk around and pick some berries. It was a hilly country, very low hills. And planes would come over. And you never knew exactly were they enemy planes or were they friendly planes. And the thought struck me, what if they were enemy planes? It wasn't that I was constantly worried. I was taking the children out. But it was a passing thought. With ten kids, I knew you couldn't put on everyone's gas mask.
Heyman: Would you say that your becoming an analyst had anything to do with your relationship with Freud?
Schur: I think that was the influence of all the people around me. We were friends with all the people you read about—the Bibrings and the Sterbas and the Hitschmanns and the Waelders and the Krises and the Hartmanns.
Heyman: I assume you were closer to many of them than to Freud.
Schur: Well, they were, of course—
Heyman: Your age.
Schur: No. They were older. My husband's age. I went skiing with the Sterbas and with the Reichs. The only ones who are still living are Kronold and Richard Sterba None of those people really knew Freud too well. Sterba wrote about Freud in his book. He went to those Wednesday meetings. Else Pappenheim was a bit closer because her mother was a friend of Martha Freud's—I do not know exactly. She is one of the people who knows a bit about Freud firsthand. She's my age. None of the other people knew Freud that well. Freud was born in ‘56 and they were born in the eighties and nineties. So Freud was much older.
Heyman: Let me ask you something else. It seems to me that it might even have been a relief for you when Freud finally died, because you could leave.
Schur: Yes, in some ways, yes. I do not know if one could admit that so completely even to oneself.
Heyman: One of the reasons for asking these questions, when a person of that stature dies, I remember when Kennedy died. Everyone remembers where he was at the moment when he heard about Kennedy's death.
Schur: Yes, but you cannot compare [the death of] Kennedy. Kennedy's death was an all-of-a-sudden shock. I remember. You're quite right. I was working in an agency in East Harlem and I heard it over loud speakers in the street, loud speakers on cars or trucks maybe, when I was going home. And it was a real shock. It was all over the city. With Freud you expected that he would die. You cannot quite compare Freud to Kennedy in popularity. I do not know how many British knew about Freud. Even here you do not know how many people know about Freud. Our circle. And the people who read The New York Times know about Freud.
Heyman: To us, he's very large. And culturally he is. But you're right to most people, who's Freud? And Kennedy was, is, a much more known person. Also a young man cut down. Do you remember how your husband reacted to Freud's death?
Schur: You don't sit around and talk about it. Those are remarks which come while you do all kinds of things. I hear from my patients that, they sit down and talk about something. That was not our style. You sit down at the table and eat dinner or you drive in the car and discuss something, but not formally—Of course he was very depressed. It was all mixed in with leaving London and worrying that the bombs would fall. So you didn't know what had priority.
Heyman: I appreciate your telling me these things. It's very helpful Perhaps people, younger analysts, those of us who didn't live through those times had an idealized picture of the impact Freud's death had on the world. In fact people's lives were in chaos.
Schur: It wasn't really chaos, but they had other things which were occupying their minds at the same time, serious things. You worried that London might be bombed.
Heyman: Thank you very much.
Heyman: You may well not remember this, but do you recall how you heard of his death?
Stone: That I was trying to think of. I think I just heard it through the grapevine, from the [New York Psychoanalytic] Institute. Somebody told me who was in the know. Maybe one of the older people, maybe a contemporary. I'm not sure of that. But of course it appeared in the paper quickly.
Heyman: And did his death have much of an effect? I know people were worried everything would fragment.
Stone: I don't think it was because of his death. There may have been some symbolic inner shake-up that made some people bolder to step out and declare themselves as new geniuses and so on—maybe. Maybe there was some subtle effect but I can't say it's proved. I can't say that's certain by any means. But I do remember the gloomy predictions. A lot of the things did follow thereafter. Karin Horney lost her teaching privileges at the [New York Psychoanalytic] Institute. Her response was to resign. I don't blame her. She was judged to be too deviant to teach in our very classical environment Clara Thompson resigned in sympathy with Horney and each of them took a certain number of their students. And then they parted company. And Horney founded her own institute. Clara Thompson went with Fromm and Sullivan and founded the William Alanson White. But then a few years later the Columbia split occurred. That ws founded by Rado, who took some people with him. Not too many, but a fair number: five, six graduate analysts went with him. Then Lorand went later: that was the founding of what was then the Downstate Institute, now NYU. That was a peaceful sort of budding. I mean there was no great disagreement there or ideological trouble. He wanted to have an institute where he was the leader, and he founded it and gave employment to a lot of people as training analysts—