After reading Olga Umansky's article in TAP Spring/Summer 2022 about APsaA-sponsored pre-war immigration of Viennese psychoanalysts, it occurred to Lore Reich Rubin that readers might be interested in case history examples of such immigration. In her memoir, Memories of a Chaotic World: Growing Up as the Daughter of Annie Reich and Wilhelm Reich (IPBooks, 2021), she has written about her mother Annie Reich's experiences and friendships as seen through the eyes of her daughter, age ten at the time of their arrival in the States.
Below are excerpts from Lore Reich Rubin's book, with context provided by the author in italics. Edits were made only to address minor formatting discrepancies and for the sake of continuity.
Upon our arrival in New York there was some problem about our immigration. As a result, we were among the last people to be interviewed and allowed to disembark from the ship. At the dock we were met by Sandor Rado, who had to wait the many hours it took for our approval. Rado was a psychoanalyst friend from Berlin, who had issued the $2000 affidavits, one for each my mother, sister and myself, required by the State Department so we should not become a burden on the US.
[Sandor Rado] drove us by taxi to the upper east side of Manhattan where an apartment had been lent to us. It was August or late July. People were on vacation. I remember the large gloomy-looking, unadorned apartment houses looming over us, so much taller than the six-floor limit in Europe.
The apartment was terribly hot; this was in the middle of a New York heat wave. There was so much soot and pollution in New York at that time that the windows had openings like small slits in them but could not be raised. The apartment had no fans, not that we were familiar with such a device, and air conditioning had not yet been invented. We were stifling, could not breathe, and could not sleep. We had never experienced such heat before. As is normal in Central Europe in August, we had arrived in woolen clothes and desperately needed thinner things.
Our immigration had been arranged by a committee run by the American Psychoanalytic Association under the direction of Lawrence Kubie, whom we had known in Vienna. He set out to rescue as many Central European analysts as he could, and actually he did a wonderful job. For instance, the apartment lent to us had been obtained through the committee. Rado let us off and had gone back to Connecticut where he was vacationing. Mother had no idea how to obtain summer clothes. She called the person in the office of the committee who said, “Why you just take the subway down to Macy's and there you can buy clothes.” We were not used to ‘ready-mades,’ we did not know where the subway was, how to use it, or how much to pay for it. So in spite of the really wonderful help the committee had given, we were dumped on our own in a strange city, luckily not in a strange language. My mother enlisted the aid of her closest friends, the Loewenfelds, who had arrived a few weeks before us. Together they ventured into the unknown subway system to buy suitable clothes and sought suitable permanent lodging. […] In a few weeks the Loewenfelds ended up in a furnished apartment in a brownstone, and my mother in a furnished residential hotel [the Franconia], close to each other, on the upper west side of New York. Mother had taken eight years of English in school and was well versed in it. In fact, as soon as she was able to get a patient, she was able to analyze in English.
I missed the Macy's adventure because the day after we arrived, the Rados invited me to stay with them at their summer vacation home in Stamford, Connecticut.
The Psychoanalytic Rescue Committee did a very good job arranging for stranded Central European analysts to come here, obtaining affidavits, and helping with transportation. I have not heard of any analysts who, if they desired and it was before the war, did not succeed in emigrating
to the United States, thanks to the committee's efforts. What to do with all these refugee analysts once they got here was another matter. The local American analysts were not too pleased with such a great influx of competition. It was in the middle of the Great Depression and patients who wished to undergo this new and unknown treatment were in short supply. Kubie had expected the new arrivals to disperse across America. Here he was defeated, as the refugees preferred to congregate amongst other people they knew.
Nevertheless, my mother—after having disposed of me to the Rados and my sister to a camp where she got a job at age 14 as an assistant counselor—traveled to Cleveland to be interviewed by Douglas Bond for a job at Case Western Reserve. Dr. Bond was not eager to have her there, saying that they had enough analysts. My mother felt rather despairing and remembered sitting on a Lake Erie dock dangling her bare feet and having no idea what to do. Much later, Annie Katan went to Cleveland and was well received. After this, Mother tried to see if she could join [Otto] Fenichel in Los Angeles. Again, although the committee had been overall helpful in getting the analysts to America, there was no one to advise her on how to go about traveling to Los Angeles. Therefore, Mother went to Thomas Cook, the travel agency well known in Europe, but probably top-of-the line in America. They told her it would cost $300 per person to travel to Los Angeles, an enormous sum which she could not afford. So that is how we stayed in New York. Adjustment to America was painful and difficult even for this elite group of refugees, although they had professional connections, a desirable career, and, contrary to previous immigrants, spoke fluent English.
It is my belief, though I have no proof of this, that the initial snubbing and lack of welcome by the American members of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute contributed to the refugees not integrating properly into that institute, instead forming a self-contained clique. Of course, the refugees also felt snobbish toward the American analysts, thinking that only they, the refugees, were the true bearers of the Freudian torch.
There were other, well-known analysts whose arrival in America was totally different. These were not refugees but invited guests with prearranged jobs, mostly at universities. These analysts were wined and dined, honored, listened to with rapt attention, their office hours filled even
before they arrived. Such people as Helene Deutsch, [Karen] Horney, Rado, and Franz Alexander had a totally different experience from us—experiences that did not rob them of their self-esteem and sense of self identity. In fact, they were idolized and blossomed in the attention lavished on them. However, this experience did not translate necessarily to their spouses. Felix Deutsch for instance, an internist, who came with his wife Helene, was not welcomed and had a terrible time reestablishing himself.
Analysts who came as refugees were definitely not wined and dined. Few American analysts welcomed them or ever socialized with them. Exceptions were those American analysts who had themselves traveled to Vienna or Berlin to be trained and knew the refugees personally. Thus, the refugee analysts huddled together and braced each other for the rigors of adjustment to this new country. At first my mother clung to the Loewenfelds who also came from Prague and previously from Berlin. Later, more friends arrived in New York: Edith Jacobson, Mädi Olden, and Berta Bornstein (one of the few lay analysts to be accepted by the New York Psychoanalytic Institute). These women were part of my mother's very intimate circle. As immigration continued over the next few years, many other analysts arrived from Europe including the Isakowers, the Krises, the Hartmanns, and the Loewensteins. It is my belief, though I have no proof of this, that the initial snubbing and lack of welcome by the American members of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute contributed to the refugees not integrating properly into that institute, instead forming a self-contained clique. Of course, the refugees also felt snobbish toward the American analysts, thinking that only they, the refugees, were the true bearers of the Freudian torch. It is no surprise then that as the number of refugees increased, they eventually took over the leadership of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to the chagrin of their original American colleagues.
Another indignity that the refugee analysts had to undergo was to obtain a license to practice medicine. Actually, an analyst could practice without a license by not being a medical doctor. […] But because the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) had legalistic membership requirements that only physicians could be members, the ordinary medically trained refugees had to take this exam—lay analysts with rare exceptions were excluded from membership in the societies and institutes run by the APsaA. The medical analysts first had to pass an English exam, and then these medical analysts, who in general had not practiced medicine and never had had an internship, needed to take a state licensing exam. Fenichel for example was required by the state of California to take an internship, which he did in his mid-forties. In those days—and probably illegally even now—interns were on duty all day and every other night. This is hard for people in their twenties, but for a man in his mid-forties it was too much, and Fenichel died of a stroke, I believe, before he could obtain his license. My mother studied mightily for these exams, ironically flunked the psychiatric section, and had to repeat it. It is not surprising that she failed this subject, as she had never had a residency in a mental hospital and had gone straight from medical school into a psychoanalytic practice. In the meantime, she was able to develop a small practice, earn a somewhat meager living and in a few years repay the loan that had enabled us to come here.
Contrary to the fears of the American analysts however, the most amazing thing was that psychoanalysis became more popular with the arrival of these refugee analysts, and the patient pool expanded. By the time the war ended, there were great shortages of couch time, but this eventual outcome in leadership and acceptance of psychoanalysis was not foreseeable in the summer and early fall of 1938.
After several months, my stepfather, Thomas, received a visa, and we moved into a larger one-bedroom apartment in the Hotel Franconia on West 72nd Street. The following excerpts begin by describing that time.
[My sister] Eva and I shared the living room at night, while our elders had the bedroom. Mother had apparently started a small practice. She would see patients in the living room, and we would be huddled in the bedroom, having to be absolutely still so as not to disturb her or the patient. This was like being in jail; I had nothing to do, apparently nothing to read, could not play the radio. I remember lying on the bed in utter boredom and paralysis. I learned to empty my mind completely and to stay in a vacuum.
We cooked in the tiny kitchenette, on hotplates. Often at night my sister and I again, as we had in early Vienna, ate porridge, farina with small chocolate shavings, sugar and milk. We must have been short of money because Thomas would order one quart and one pint of milk every two days, and on the second day we were always short of milk. […] In the mornings I was amazed to get cold cereal; we never had seen this in Europe. It does seem we ate a lot of one or another type of cereal.
It was also in the Hotel Franconia that we children were introduced to household chores. My sister and I were required to alternate washing dishes, as well as doing the family wash. This we did in the bathtub, bending over, and scrunching our backs; it was awkward and at the same time strenuous.
At some point, perhaps a year and a half after arrival, our container arrived bearing all our furniture, and we moved to an apartment of six rooms on 96th Street near Central Park West. This became our permanent home for almost 25 years. It was a tall apartment building and we moved to the 16th floor. It had doormen, elevator men, and two wings, a fancy lobby and an awning that went to the street, so one would not get wet in the rain as one got into a taxi. To outward appearances we settled into New York and seemed to begin to live a “normal” life. At least my mother must have settled in, she had enough income to meet the rent—which because of the Depression was rather low—and to feel that she could reestablish a home. We even acquired a maid, who I believe worked for $8/week.
Having ensconced ourselves in a permanent residence, with Mother in the process of establishing a practice and the children placed in a school, we seemed to have arrived at a suitable adjustment to living in America. However, in reality, the aftermath of the dislocation took many years to heal. […] The New York Psychoanalytic Institute and Society soon resembled a reconstituted Viennese Psychoanalytic Society admixed with members from Berlin and Prague. Despite the Depression, psychoanalysis began to flourish. Fairly soon after we moved to our apartment Mother seems, despite persistent worries about finances, to have established a full, though low-fee, psychoanalytic practice. Thus, she was able to maintain her basic identity, that of a psychoanalyst.
The European psychoanalysts came here with the desire to continue the agenda set by Anna and Sigmund Freud, of preserving “true psychoanalysis.” Historically Freud had adhered to this agenda over many splits and upheavals within the psychoanalytic
movement. Now these desires, or one should say anxieties, took on new meaning. The wish to preserve the “true psychoanalysis” had had severe blows in the past five years. First there were the negotiations and compromises with the Nazis to keep psychoanalysis alive in Germany. Then Anna Freud came to England in 1938 and found that the British were embracing her rival Melanie Klein. Finally, Freud had always thought that the Americans would dilute psychoanalysis, clean up its sexuality and deny the Oedipus complex; the refugee analysts felt they needed to ward off this dilution. They ignored that they themselves were forever changing or advancing psychoanalysis, even themselves veering from sexuality and the Oedipus complex, that is, diminishing their importance, and so were not open to ideas held by others, especially Americans. The psychoanalysis that evolved in New York was basically different from the one Fenichel had preached in Prague. Fenichel adhered to the structural theory and conflicts about guilt, especially from the Oedipal period. The New York analysts led by Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein added the concepts of conflicts between libido and aggression, neutralization of aggressive energy by libidinal energy, and the use of this neutralized energy to form ego functions.
Anna Freud had a lot to do with the developing dissension within the New York Psychoanalytic Institute during which time a series of analysts were ejected or squeezed out, Horney, [Clara] Thompson, and Rado amongst them. Once these splits occurred the ejected analysts were persona-non-grata and were extruded not only from the organization, the journals, and the meetings, but also from social contacts. This must have been awkward for my mother who was indebted to Rado for his help with our immigration and the fact that she knew him well from Berlin. From my vantage point, I only saw that Rado had completely disappeared, was never mentioned, did not exist.
Looking back, I suspect that Annie Reich felt she had to exclude Rado in order to maintain the trust of the Viennese psychoanalytic community.
After receiving her medical license and establishing a full, low-paid psychoanalytic practice, my mother determined it was time to apply for training analyst status. Therefore, after a long day seeing patients, and a brief family dinner, she retreated from her family to write and publish psychoanalytic papers. She also worked hard for the volunteer-run New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She taught courses and attended committee meetings. It seems to me now, however, that her involvement with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute failed to create the excitement in Annie that she had experienced in the small group in Prague. After all her troubles and efforts, Annie Reich became a training analyst in 1942 and then developed a very successful psychoanalytic career in her new adopted country.
From Memories of a Chaotic World: Growing Up as the Daughter of Annie Reich and Wilhelm Reich. © 2021 by Lore Reich Rubin. Published by IPBooks. Reproduced by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. Images courtesy of IPBooks.
Lore Reich Rubin, M.D., is a retired psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who publishes on psychoanalytic history. She has worked in private practice, taught at the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Institute and the University of Pittsburgh, and held numerous consulting positions in the community.