Introductory Remarks: Conference on "Psychoanalysis and Power" : Sponsored by Goethehouse and The New School for Social Research, 12/10-11, 1993

In these hallowed halls where post-modernism has reigned for a decade, I shall open this meeting not by reflecting upon deconstruction, but rather upon reconstruction. Deconstruction involves the questioning, even the bashing of precious substantive assumptions. Reconstruction involves the dialogue between assumptions, a process of continuous recontextualization arriving at new symbolic meanings. I believe that this process of reconstruction is aptly illustrated by the significance of this exhibit, but it also, perhaps more cogently, applies to the life work of our opening speaker.

The Hamburg Congress of 1985 was an historic moment in the history of the psychoanalytic movement. It marked the first occasion since the 1932 Wiesbaden Congress of holding such a meeting on German soil. This idea had first been proposed in 1977 in Jerusalem but met with opposition then. As a compromise, Hamburg, the least nazified German city, was selected for 1985.

For those of us who had our roots in German culture, it was a particularly moving experience, for as we walked along the beautiful boulevards, listening nostalgically to the cabaret songs of Weil and Brecht of the 1920s, we could not help but be conscious of the blood beneath the pavement. Many American colleagues chose not to attend, but for those who did, it was a valuable experience.

A pivotal event of this congress was the first showing of the exhibit “Hier geht das Leben auf eine sehr merkwurdige Weise weiter . . .”, which has since been presented in Paris, Lyon, Rome, London, and now, more than eight years later, in New York. The exhibit represents a valiant, painstaking, thoughtful, scholarly achievement by the younger generation of German analysts—Brecht, Friedrich, Hermann, Kaminer, and Jeulich—who offer us an historical and pictorial reconstruction of the psychoanalytic profession in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. It singles out the origins of the old Berlin Institute, its innovative spirit and leadership in kultur critique. It details the troubling saga of Aryan analysts who in 1933 asked for the resignation of their Jewish colleagues, often in a most underhanded fashion, always under the pretext of preserving the profession. As mayor Dohnanyi said, “. . . bit by bit was sacrificed . . . always in the pretended interest of preserving the whole—which in the end was lost” (1986). There is the disturbing story of the Goring Institute where analysts participated in projects concerning the persecution of homosexuals, the sterilization of the mentally retarded and the blind in the service of eugenics and the purity of the race, as well as their participation in the German war effort. Yet, the futility of compromise was most patently illustrated by the report that in the corridor of the institute a picture of Freud was hung opposite that of Hitler, the two men staring at one another. This observation raises the question whether adaptation to the demands of state within a totalitarian system is feasible. The state encroaches upon every aspect of clinical practice, clinical theory, and professional life. By comparison, when Nazi troops arrived in Paris in 1940, the institute simply closed its doors and disbanded.

This exhibit is not only an archival documentation of the past, it is a symbol of our professional vulnerability—our vulnerability to seduction and to succumbing to power. The collaborating German analysts of the 1930s were not storm troopers. They were ordinary clinicians with some political ambition. Some, to be sure, heroically resisted. This was the discovery of 1985. Now, it is 1993 and we must ask: What are the vulnerabilities of our profession today? I consider the exhibit an ongoing symbol of the vulnerability of our profession, manifest wherever psychoanalysis fights for its survival, and I would say this fight will continue well into the twenty-first century.

And now, from the reconstruction of professional conduct to the reconstruction of our psychoanalytic discipline. It is in the work of Martin Bergmann that we can find the process of reconstruction of psychoanalytic thought par excellence. I could, of course, make my introduction with the usual facts and facets of professional achievement, but...