From the very beginning, women have played important roles on the psychoanalytic scene in Chicago. Few realize that until her departure for New York in September 1934, Karen Horney was the Chicago Institute's Associate Director under Franz Alexander. In the Institute's first annual report, Margaret Gerard is listed as consultant, and Catherine Bacon and Helen McLean as Clinic Associates. These women remained stalwart members of the Institute's faculty until Gerard died in 1954, Bacon moved to Philadelphia in 1956, and McLean retired in the late sixties. Therese Benedek joined the faculty on her arrival from Europe in 1936. Helen Ross was a Research Associate in the thirties, and served as Administrative Director from 1942 to 1956. Lucia Tower, one of the very early graduates of the Institute, became a research associate in the 1930s, as did Adelaide Johnson in the early forties. In those days the entire Institute was deeply involved in psychosomatic research, and each of these women had her own field of interest: Benedek in the area of ovarian function, Bacon and Ross in asthma, Gerard in enuresis, and Johnson in rheumatoid arthritis. In the early fifties, Irene Josselyn came into the group, with special interests in rheumatic fever and ulcerative colitis. After Gerard's death, she carried on with a special ward at the University of Illinois for children with psychosomatic diseases.
Women contributed to psychoanalysis, and the community at large, in many ways in Chicago. Benedek was probably the most prolific writer among them, addressing not only the relationship between natural bodily functions (e.g., menstruation, pregnancy, and fertility) and psychological dynamics, but also the psychology of developmental phases such as infancy, parenthood, the climacteric, maturity, and senescence. Her educational works include early papers on termination and countertransference, and a major book on supervision with Joan Fleming in 1966. For a person whose heavily accented speech was often difficult to comprehend, she was a remarkably gifted teacher.
Helen McLean's interests were quite different. Having studied in China with her husband, she was interested in cultural differences and race relations, as well as the psychological analysis of great literature, with special emphasis on the ancient Greeks. One of her last publications was on medical education in Africa. Catherine Bacon was interested above all in the psychology of women, and contributed some of the very first works on female homosexuality. Lucia Tower wrote a now classic paper on countertransference in 1956, but her major contributions were in the area of supervision. During World War II Charlotte Babcock conducted an unpublished study of Japanese-American males, evincing a cross-cultural interest that was continued in Pittsburgh, where she moved in 1953, with African-Americans and the Amish. Although her background was in anatomy, she was consultant to a social agency, wrote on diet and foster parenting, and even supervised child analyses. This last was occasioned by Emmy Sylvester's removal to San Francisco, after having worked with Bruno Bettelheim at the Orthogenic School. Sylvester's primary interest was in feeding and learning disturbances in young children.
Another prolific writer, mostly in the area of supervision, was Joan Fleming, who also did pioneering work in parent loss and mourning. At about the same time, Adelaide Johnson was publishing her work on delinquency. After moving to Rochester, Minnesota, she wrote a paper on heterosexual transference and countertransference which, highly criticized, was never published. Irene Josselyn, another prolific writer, addressed her work on adolescence primarily to social workers and the lay public, capitalizing on her gift for translating psychoanalytic concepts into more easily understood language. In the early sixties she moved to Arizona. Other significant contributions of the fifties and sixties were Maria Kramer's paper on self-analysis, Frances Hannett's on female physicians, and several papers by Helen Beiser on personality problems related to profession, and on educational problems in child analysis. Beiser wrote also on games, computers, and self-analysis.
The psychoanalytic literature, however, is not the only area in which Chicago women made contributions. All of the women mentioned also taught classes and supervised candidates. In fact, as candidates were required to have at least one case supervised by a woman, the relatively few women on the faculty tended to do far more supervision than did the men. They also participated in interviewing prospective candidates, and again, because an interview with a woman was required, did more than their share of these interviews. Women participated in the administrative functions of the Institute in a variety of ways. Joan Fleming served as Dean of Education. In the Child Analysis training program, for a number of years conducted somewhat apart from other training, women served as chair, from Margaret Gerard to Irene Josselyn, Anne Benjamin, and Helen Beiser. In the early days of the Institute, being named to staff carried special status. A lifetime appointment, it was achieved by Babcock, Bacon, Benedek, McLean, Tower, Josselyn, Johnson, Gerard, and Benjamin. When an elected council replaced these staff appointments, women were elected in numbers proportionate to their presence on the faculty.
Another group of women related to the Institute from their geographic teaching posts—Tillie Krug in Cincinnati, Janice Norton and Eleanor Steele in Denver. Other women whose contributions were primarily educational included Edith Sabshin, Frances Hannett, Maria Kramer, Catherine Cullinan, Marian Tolpin, Elsie Haug, Barbara Rocah, Marjorie Barnett, Ilse Judas, Renee Gelman, Brenda Solomon, Judith Davis, Glorye Wool, and Minna Emch. Noted for significant contributions to The American are Joan Fleming, Helen Ross, and, before her recent death, Edith Sabshin. Many also served the Chicago Society, in various positions from president on down. Anne Benjamin and Helen Beiser served as presidents of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, and Irene Josselyn was the first editor of the Journal of Child Psychiatry. Frances Hannett Gitelson served as vice president of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
After a period in which women entered training in decreasing numbers relative to men, and consequently moved on less frequently to teaching and administrative responsibilities than in the early days of the Institute, their numbers seem once again to be increasing. If the achievements of their predecessors provide any indication, the new generation of women analysts in Chicago will not be long in making their influence felt, both locally and in the profession at large.