We met in Harold Blum's study on October 8, 1989, a crisp, bright autumn day- an apropos atmosphere for a talk with Dr. Blum. The intensity of Dr. Blum's scholarship is evident in his writings and discussions. He has written more than 55 papers covering the gamut of psychoanalytic topics, editing and adding is own contributions to the literature. As Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, as Executive Director of The Sigmund Freud Archives, and as Program Chairman of the International Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. Blum has had the opportunity to participate in and experience firsthand the history of psychoanalysis that was to be our focus and main topic of discussion.
WJ: Let us talk briefly about the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. It was surely a source of great satisfaction for you.
HB: Indeed it was. The Journal was an extraordinary analytic education and a unique opportunity to contribute to psychoanalytic education and the growing body of analytic knowledge. The Journal was at the frontiers of analytic thought and controversy, so that the editorial functions were concerned with analytic advance and innovation as well as educational review and appropriate application of analytic knowledge and principles. The Editor has a position of special responsibility because The Journal has its own influence in the field. The selection of papers and efforts to enrich those papers and improve the quality of analytic publication are not without their own difficulty, but the editorial work had its own analytic and personal rewards. A highly refined scholarly instrument, The Journal could be a demanding, harsh taskmaster. Its direction was always a challenging, consuming task and an unique analytic gratification. The growth of interest in The Journal and the parallel growth in the scope and circulation of The Journal were the most pleasant developments in the face of all the problems within and affecting the field of psychoanalysis.
WJ: The Journal flourished and also expanded in new ways?
“We now have 7,500 to 8,000 of Freud's letters in the collection. Freud was one of the great letter writers of all time. We think that he wrote… perhaps as many as 20,000.”
HB: Yes, the first Journal Supplements were published beginning with the updating of female psychology. These were symposium-type issues, with all the papers and book reviews devoted to a common analytic topic. The Book Section was also enlarged with broadened coverage of interdisciplinary contributions and explorations in fields pertinent to psychoanalysis. It compared and contrasted classical points of view with emerging trends and presented new ideas. We published many articles that consolidated and updated the varieties of psychoanalytic thought— developmental theory, object relations theory, structure and character, narcissism, self psychology and action language. The Journal was the first to publish a Freud-Klein dialogue, the first to offer contemporary points of view on female psychology as a special series of papers.
WJ: In addition to the important analytic influences on you early in your career, and then during your Journal work, you were associated with Anna Freud and Margaret Mahler. Tell us about your association with Margaret Mahler.
HB: I came to know her as a result of my interest in the relationship between psychoanalytic reconstruction in analytic work and in developmental research, and attempts to correlate the two. We gradually became friends and had many long discussions about analytic thought and history.
We talked at length about the latest ideas about infant development. For instance, how and from what technical perspectives could one deal with those issues in working with adults? In other words, if the infant or child lives on in the adult, how is this really manifest, and how can we establish and trace the connections between the two? This was an area in which Mahler was interested. She thought that the increasing sophistication of infant observation and a rapidly expanding body of knowledge about infant development would contribute to more refined and more accurate, as well as deeper, analytic reconstructions.
Both Anna Freud and Margaret Mahler were interested in the foundations of the personality and in developmental interferences and deviation. My own interests have extended to deviant development and its relation to conflict and to the genetic-developmental viewpoint and reconstruction, a fundamental area of analytic work complementary to transference. I chaired a research group on reconstruction for the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund for many years, and I'm writing a book on reconstruction on behalf of the group.
WJ: You also have your interest in the “reconstruction” of the history of
“My hope is that we can look forward to a much wider appreciation of Freud's contributions, including those … which were not written for publication.”
We now have 7,500 to 8,000 of Freud's letters in the collection. Freud was one of the great letter writers of all time—we think that he wrote between 10,000 and 15,000 letters, perhaps as many as 20,000. We don't know how many letters may reside in private apartments and autograph collections around the world. He tried to answer every request for information, every inquiry. If the letters were all collected together, they would probably exceed the Standard Edition in size. We have the larger collections: for example, Freud-Fliess, Freud-Abraham, Freud-Jung, Freud-Anna Freud.
Very soon the Freud Museum will be publishing the Brief Chronicle, Freud's own ledger of his correspondence, with little notes and annotations between 1929 and 1939.
WJ: He kept a ledger of his correspondence?
HB: Yes, he kept a little visitors' and correspondence log, which most of the analytic world and intellectual community doesn't know about. You can see what he selected for notation. He reports receiving various kinds of mail, has notes about what was happening, and so on. The final remark, which just precedes his death in 1939 is, “War panic.” It's going to be a very interesting publication of the Freud Museum.
In addition, we hope to publish a comprehensive index of Freud's letters. Right now scholars hoping to find out more about what Freud thought about a particular person— say, Ernest Jones or Karen Horney or Dora—would find it impossible to know precisely in which letters Freud may have mentioned that person. Nor would they be able to determine exactly what Freud said in his widely scattered correspondence about the problems of alcoholism, anxiety, or trauma. Did he have any later thoughts about phobias, obsessions, character disorder, or problems of training analysis?
WJ: That is really quite a project if the letters run as long as the Standard Edition.
HB: Such an index would make a major contribution historically, biographically, and scientifically. It promises to add a new dimension to analytic history and to Freud's ideas and broaden the range of accessibility to those ideas.
WJ: What other kinds of artifacts are contained in The Archives?
HB: The Archives contain, in addition to written documents, photographs and movies taken of Freud and the Freud family, which we have preserved on video tape. There are interviews with people who knew Freud and who worked closely with him. The collection includes a Freud recording in English, done for the BBC.
And portraits of Freud and of the Wolf Man hang in the Library of Congress, wonderful to behold. I'm sure this would astonish Freud and his famous patient.
WJ: How does one gain access to The Archives?
HB: Notwithstanding the great deal of misunderstanding that has surrounded that question, The Archives has a policy of equal access. No one is disadvantaged; no one is favored. All scholars— psychoanalysts or nonanalysts— historians, biographers, psychologists, anyone who wishes to examine any of Freud's writings is welcome to do so on direct application to the Library of Congress. They have very broad, impartial access criteria that are no different from those for their other collections. Anyone who meets the Library of Congress qualifications can gain access to and use their unrestricted collections.
WJ: Is this access policy of The Sigmund Freud Archives and the Library of Congress a recent one?
“The Freud Museum gives everyone an opportunity to see and directly experience something of the spirit, the atmosphere, and the material surround in which the founder of psychoanalysis lived and worked.”
WJ: How have The Archives affected your own analytic orientation?
HB: I was always interested in Freud psychobiography and Freud the person, as well as the interrelation between his life and his work, between the man and his ideas and discoveries. My position in The Archives has certainly excited and reinforced that interest. The value and validity of psychoanalytic discourse are, however, autonomous from Freud's personal life.
My hope is that we can look forward to a much wider appreciation of Freud's contributions, including those that appear in his less formal writings, which were not written for publication. As the full Freud correspondence becomes available and can be exhaustively studied, we are getting a more rounded and deeper picture of Freud, his life, the cultural surround, the Zeitgeist, his family background. We are getting new ideas about the history of psychoanalysis, the relationship between Freud and the pioneers of psychoanalysis, their mutual interaction, their growth-promoting or inhibiting influence, and their reciprocally creative ferment. We are also getting some new ideas about heretofore unknown scientific contributions, suggestions, formulations, and propositions that appear in the letters.
WJ: How do you obtain contributions to The Archives?
HB: Some are donated by the analysts or their heirs; others, by friends of psychoanalysis. We do seek them out. We want this collection to be just as complete, as total, a representation of Freud's scientific writings and personal correspondence as possible.
We hope that analysts all over will actively support The Archives, helping us with acquisitions, locating possible acquisitions, and encouraging those who have Freud documents to donate them.
We may have to turn to the wider world of those sympathetic to Freud and psychoanalysis for financial support of the work of The Archives. When it was necessary to find the funds to buy a particular collection of letters, there were marvelous people like Muriel Gardiner. Now we must turn for support not only to the analytic community, but also to those in the community-at-large who are appreciative of Freud's magnificent accomplishments.
Sometimes we need money to buy Freud letters, which now sell for several thousands of dollars each. A thousand dollars for a postcard: “Sorry. I don't have time to see you. Sigmund Freud.” A $1,000 autograph!
Individuals can donate documents or become supporters of The Sigmund Freud Archives, Inc. All documents become a permanent part of the Freud collection at the Library of Congress. Donors are entitled to a tax deduction.
WJ: The Freud Museum is a division of The Sigmund Freud Archives. How did this connection come about?
HB: In September 1938, Freud moved to 20 Maresfield Gardens for the final year of his life. It was Anna Freud's intention to maintain the Freud home as a permanent memorial and future museum. When Miss Freud first showed me the house (I, of course, had no idea that I would someday have this
connection with it), I was struck by the fact that she already was treating the house as a living memorial and museum. Everything on the main floor had been left as it was when her father died. Freud's famous desk, and his analytic couch, the rooms were as they had been— arranged to suit Freud, with a view of the garden that reminded him of the lovely views he had enjoyed in Vienna. His library has been reconstructed, the paintings and photos, the archaeological artifacts arranged, as much as possible, to recapture his living and office arrangements in the Berggasse in Vienna.
“We have every reason to believe that psychoanalytic thought will gradually become known over the globe as peoples … come to realize the fundamental importance of Freud and the discoveries that psychoanalysis has made….”
Anna Freud's wish was realized largely because of the friendship and philanthropy of Muriel Gardner. The two women were great friends. Muriel Gardner purchased 20 Maresfield Gardens and then, by prearrangement with Miss Freud, donated the house and all of its contents- everything from the rugs on the floor to the books in the library- to The Sigmund Freud Archives. Muriel Gardner's successor was the foundation she helped to create—the New-Land Foundation. And they have very magnanimously helped to fund the Freud Museum. The New-Land Foundation and The Sigmund Freud Archives are the cotrustees that manage and operate the Freud Museum. The Sigmund Freud Archives' representatives to the joint Museum Committee are, in addition to me, Peter Neubauer and Bernard Pacella. The New-Land representative analyst is Albert Solnit.
The Freud Museum is a wonderful museum, one of the fine small museums in England, but with very important American connections. It is unique- an American museum, a British museum, and an international Freud monument. There is an Anna Freud room, as well as displays of Freud and the Freud family furnishings. Meetings are held there now, and it offers an opportunity for the public at large, not necessarily connected with psychoanalysis, but everyone who has a spirit of inquiry to go and learn about Freud. The Freud Museum gives the public an opportunity to see and directly experience something of the spirit, the atmosphere, and the material surround in which the founder of psychoanalysis lived and worked, to have a first-hand look at his archaeological collection and his library, and gain a sense of how the Freud family lived.
WJ: In addition to being Executive Director of The Archives, you have since 1989 been Program Committee Chairman of the IPA. What is your overall view of the scientific aspects of psychoanalysis throughout the world?
HB: It is a time of great interest, ferment, and diversity. In some parts of the world- the Far East and Eastern Europe- there is great excitement, almost like a new discovery of Freud. In some areas of the world, Freud is only now being discovered: and quite likely there will be a renaissance of Freud where his writings were for so long suppressed. We have every reason to believe that psychoanalytic thought will gradually become known over the globe as peoples becoming more and more literate realize the fundamental importance of Freud's ideas and the discoveries that psychoanalysis has made about the human condition, about symptoms, character, and personality.
WJ: You're optimistic, then, about psychoanalysis worldwide?
HB: I'm optimistic that the basic discoveries— these truths, so to speak—cannot be lost. They are “eternal verities.” This is, though, also a time of extraordinary challenge; for at the same time as Freud is being discovered, his work is being diluted and distorted in the public press and in some of the literature. And many of Freud's fundamental ideas are not being given accurate or adequate representation in the media and in the derivative literature about Freudian psychoanalysis. Misrepresentation and misunderstanding abound, often without being recognized as such.
Psychoanalysis is simultaneously acclaimed and bowdlerized. In our field, the definitions and concepts are also contextual and historical in degree, and knowledge of their development is helpful.
Another challenge has to do with the various schools of psychoanalysis around the world. Although they have common roots and all trace a common patrimony, linkage, and lineage to Father Freud, they have evolved very differently. Kleinians may be the largest group within the International Psychoanalytic Association. Other analytic groups have developed their own concepts and ideas relatively different from those familiar and congenial to American analysts. We must preserve and promulgate basic psychoanalytic concepts, give appropriate representation to different points of view, and air psychoanalytic controversies by individuals who can logically and articulately represent their clinical work and theoretical orientation and who have a wide knowledge of psychoanalysis.
It is, then, a time of consolidation, of comparisons and contrasts between newer views and classical analytic views, a time of conceptual refinement and integration. It is also a time of competing and diffuse conceptualizations. We need to foster or scientific creativity and the continued growth and development of psychoanalysis. Basic analytic concepts and the core of psychoanalytic thought should be presented to the next generation undiluted and intact. The problems of analytic education are not getting easier; in some ways they are greater and more complicated than ever. Raising standards and educating future analysts, as well as educating medical and mental health professionals and the wider public about analytic ideas, remain a very great challenge.
“One cannot be sure that basic analytic concepts and the core of psychoanalytic thought will be presented to the next generation unbowdlerized and intact.”
We face many challenges. We also have the opportunity to provide a high level of in-depth analytic education in a way that wasn't possible before. Heretofore unknown means of rapid communication are now available to us. In meetings, publications, symposia, lectures and seminars, and person-to-person contact we have more opportunities than ever before to discuss, challenge, and question analytic ideas, to thrash out differences, to become aware of new propositions and important areas for further research, to explore areas of controversy, and to advance analytic thought. Our theoretical formulations should be correlated and consistent with relevant psychoanalytic and scientific data.
WJ: We thank you very much.
analysis, which has taken you to The Sigmund Freud Archives, where you have been Executive Director for five years. Would you explain what The Archives are and tell us something about their growth?
HB: The Sigmund Freud Archives were founded around 1951. The original trustees were among the leading analysts of the time: Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Herman Nunberg, Bertram Lewin. The decisive leadership, the initiative, and the implementation came from Kurt Eissler. It was he who, with Anna Freud's cooperation, launched and developed The Sigmund Freud Archives and, in so doing, made a monumental contribution to our knowledge of Freud and the history of psychoanalysis.
Anna Freud made major efforts to gather together her father's documents, manuscripts, papers, and correspondence. She arranged with all of her siblings to donate the entire family correspondence to The Archives. Those who had in their personal possession letters from Freud were urged to donate them. Ernst Freud and Franz Jung exchanged their father's letters in 1970, and an anonymous benefactor puchased and donated Freud's letters to our Sigmund Freud Collection at the Library of Congress. The Archives were to be a very private organization devoted to acquiring, collecting, and preserving the personal papers and scientific publications- the personal written legacy of Sigmund Freud- in their original form as far as possible and to provide for their future use by analysts, biographers, and the historians of science.
Some disappointments in establishing The Archives in Britain led ultimately to a formal relationship between The Sigmund Freud Archives and the United States Library of Congress. For 40 years a close and cooperative relationship has continued. The Library of Congress is the custodian of the Freud documents, which, in effect, are, or will become, the property of the Library of Congress for posterity. The Library of Congress has pledged to protect and maintain Freud's documents in perpetuity. If necessary, they will be chemically treated to preserve the writing and the paper.
HB: This has been the policy for several years. Anyone wishing to use The Archives should apply directly to the Library of Congress, not to The Archives. No one needs the permission of The Sigmund Freud Archives to apply
to the Manuscript Division of the Library..
The restrictions that apply are a condition of donation. They are not an effort by The Archives to censor or control and decide which documents may be made available and which may not, or to skew the view of analytic history through selective access to documents. Furthermore, our policy is to bring hitherto restricted documents before the public just as quickly as possible.
WJ: Why would donors place these kinds or restrictions on access to The Archives?
HB: We are dealing here with very sensitive issues of donor anonymity and confidentiality, sometimes very personal considerations involving relatives or friends. Very often a provision of donation was that the materials not be revealed until all the persons involved could be presumed to have died. Anna Freud, for example, restricted access to documents, by and large, until the year 2,000, which is only a decade away. I think she wanted to be sure that everybody immediately concerned with these sensitive documents would be gone.
We recently released letters that were considered highly sensitive and that everyone was waiting to see, namely, the Freud-Anna Freud and the Freud-Minna Bernays correspondence. There have been wild speculations about Freud's having had an affair with Minna. That correspondence is available now to all, and they can draw their own conclusions. But no one has yet inferred from anything in the letters that there is any evidence of any impropriety.
WJ: Why do you think there is more controversy about The Sigmund Freud Archives than about other archives?
HB: Because there is so much interest in Freud and so much controversy about his discoveries. Freud has been scrutinized perhaps more than any other human being in history. There are also inevitably people who have antagonistic and prurient interests— scandal mongers and those who, if they can't attack Freud's ideas, try to attack him personally. As we learn more about Freud, we see ever more an extraordinary genius and a very complex, fascinating human being.