One of the last of the psychoanalytic pioneers who knew Freud, Richard Sterba, died on October 24, 1989.
Born in Vienna on May 6, 1898, into a liberal, middle-class Viennese family, Sterba recounted the experiences of his formative years in his paper “Multiple Determinants of a Minor Accident” (1970).
During his adolescence, Sterba developed interests in music and literature that continued throughout his lifetime. He was a serious student of the violin, on which he became an accomplished performer. His intellectual development was stimulated and sustained by his humanistic education in the Gymnasium, by his contact with intellectuals and literati, and by his extensive reading. Among the writers who influenced him were E.T.A. Hoffman, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Schopenhauer.
At the age of 18, Sterba entered military service and served for three and a half years. He saw action on the Italian front, where he was wounded.
After his military service, Sterba began his medical education in Vienna. Early in his psychiatric training, Sterba was influenced by the lectures of Paul Schilder and Julius Wagner-Jauregg. It was toward the end of his studies that he became familiar with some of Freud's writings. They impressed him so much that during his medical residency he decided to enter psychoanalytic training and undertook his personal analysis with Dr. Edward Hitschmann.
In 1927, after a period of supervision, he was certified as a psychoanalyst by Freud and by Helene Deutsch. For several years, Sterba presented clinical material in technical seminars conducted by Wilhelm Reich, Helene Deutsch, and Hermann Nunberg. During these years he was the librarian of the Psychoanalytic Institute and Society in Vienna. He became a training analyst in the Vienna Institute and, in 1931, conducted his first course on the libido theory. His subsequent book, Introduction to the Psychoanalytic Theory of the Libido (1942/1968), was an outcome of this course. He attended Freud's Wednesday evening seminars and at one of these meetings presented a paper on sublimation that was discussed by Freud. In 1936, he began work on a Psychoanalytic dictionary (Handworterbuch der Psychoanalyse), which contained a preface by Freud. Many of Sterba's experiences and impressions of those years are detailed in his book, Reminiscences of a Viennese Psychoanalyst (1982).
While at the Vienna Institute, Sterba met his future wife, Editha, also a psychoanalyst. They were married in 1926 and had two daughters, Monica and Verena.
Hitler's rise to power, and the political and social events surrounding it in Austria, brought threats and conflict into the lives of the Sterbas. Ernest Jones, in his biography of Freud (The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol 3, 1957), writes: “A meeting of the Board of the Vienna Society had, however, been held on March 13 [1938] at which it was decided that everyone should flee the country if possible, and that the seat of the Society should be wherever Freud would settle. Freud commented: ‘After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus, Rabbi Jochanan ben Sakkai asked for permission to open a school at Jabneh for the study of the Torah. We are going to do the same. We are, after all, used to persecution by our history, tradition and some of us by personal experience,’ adding laughingly and pointing at Richard Sterba, ‘with one exception’” (p.221).
The Sterbas, however, decided to share the fate of their Jewish colleagues and two days later left for Switzerland with their children. Shortly after the Anschluss, Dr. Mueller- Braunschweig wrote to Sterba urging him to return to Vienna to assist in the restructuring of the Psychoanalytic Institute, which had become a branch of the German Psychotherapeutic Institute in Berlin and, after the exclusion of the Jewish members, had been fused with the German Psychotherapeutic Association. Sterba wrote: “I declined the offer and wrote to Jones asking whether he would make it possible for me and my family to settle in England. His answer was an unexpected blow. He wrote that he had no intention to do anything for me: ‘You will be the last one who will obtain any assistance from the International Psychoanalytic Association since you (being gentile) should have stayed in Vienna as a memory of Psychoanalysis for a happier future‘” (“Multiple Determinants of a Minor Accident,” 1970, pp. 115-116).
In 1939, after considerable difficulty, the Sterbas were finally able to emigrate from Switzerland to the United States, where they located in the Detroit area. Their experiences, in a somewhat fictionalized form, are described in Laura Z. Hobson's novel The Trespassers.
The breadth and diversity of Richard Sterba's interests became apparent during the ensuing years, when many of his clinical and technical papers were published. A number of these are included in a collection entitled Richard Sterba: The Collected Papers (North River Press, 1987). In addition, a good many papers on applied psychoanalysis were published in various psychoanalytic journals, among them, “A Dutch Celebration of a Festival” (1941), “On Christmas” (1944), “On Hallowe'en” (1948), and a delightful paper on the then popular expression, “Kilroy was Here” (1948).
He wrote on such diverse topics as “Metapsychology of Morale” (1943), Toward the Problem of the Musical Process“ (1946), ”Some Psychological Factors in Negro Race Hatred and in Anti-Negro Riots“ (1947), and ”On Some Psychological Factors in Pictorial Advertising“ (1950). During this period, he and Editha collaborated in writing Beethoven and His Nephew (1954).
Richard's interest in art led him, again in collaboration with his wife, to study the works of Michelangelo and to try to understand the relationship of the dynamics of his personality to his art. Altogether Richard Sterba's scientific oeuvre consists of some 150 publications.
In addition to his psychoanalytic work with patients, supervision, consultations, and teaching at the Wayne University School of Medicine, where he was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Richard Sterba was active in organizational work with the American Psychoanalytic Association. He became a member in 1939 and served on a number of committees including the Board on Professional Standards in 1947. He was a member of the Michigan Association for Psychoanalysis and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society.
In the analytic community at large, nationally and internationally, Richard Sterba unceasingly exemplified the highest standards of scientific integrity. In his publications, in his teaching, and in his clinical practice, he provided a unique model of keen scientific observation and critical acumen along with deep compassion and empathy. His background in the humanistic tradition, with its cultural and intellectual derivatives, has served distinctively to enrich the teaching and scientific discipline of psychoanalysis to a depth and perspective rarely seen in the world today.
December Meeting: Fontainbleu Hilton Resort and Spa, Miami Beach, Florida December 5-9, 1990