R. D. Hinshelwood
The 1920s, the first decade of the journal, was a time of hope and dismay. The phenomenal violence of the First World War was slowly absorbed in Europe and a new realization of what human beings could do to each other was faced. The optimism was to resolve that it should never happen again, and Freud believed that psychoanalysis had a contribution to make to that resolve. In his paper (1919a) “Lines of advance in psychoanalysis” he pointed with some enthusiasm towards innovative developments in psychoanalysis itself.
Curiously, one powerful factor that supported optimism over psychoanalysis was the war. The huge “haemorrhage” of manpower due to “war neurosis”—i.e. post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—led, after the war, in all European (and American) armies, to a search to understand the illness psychologically. At the time it was only psychoanalysis that could offer a credible theory of the condition and, therefore, a method of prevention (see, for instance, Ferenczi et al., 1921). From this, psychoanalysis gained a lot of credit in some quarters, and was widely applied in the treatment and rehabilitation of soldiers. Over the years of the 1920s, the journal reviewed many papers and books on the topic. The topic of war neurosis was of great interest again at the time of the Second World War (see, for instance, Miller, 1940). Freud’s reaction to the enormity of the social violence gave rise to at least one of his major texts— ”Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (Freud, 1921c); and probably “Beyond the pleasure principle” (Freud, 1920g). Both these works serve as inspiration to much of what was published in the 1920s.
The backdrop of social changes and historical events are rarely addressed explicitly in these papers. The post-war poverty in Germany, and the plight of the working class in mid-decade in Britain, appear to go unmarked. Nor do the events of the developing Soviet regime in Russia warrant mention, despite their devastating effect on Russian psychoanalysts. This seeming neglect of social occurrences is, I presume, on the grounds that they are mere epiphenomena and that psychoanalysis is an investigation of the psychological underpinnings of any social phenomena, a view not necessarily shared by social scientists (see the debate between Malinowski, 1923, and Jones, 1925).
One of the enthusiastic new projects after the First World War was to found an English-language journal. Psychoanalysis had originated in Germany; and though a number of Freud’s books had been translated and published in Britain and the United States in English, this new journal was a celebration of the spread of psychoanalysis to international dimensions. As Ernest Jones said in his editorial to the first volume:
It has long been evident that a periodical published mainly in German could not indefinitely subserve the function of an official international organ, and, since interest in Psycho-Analysis has extended from German-speaking countries to English-speaking countries far more than to any other, it was only a question of time when such a Journal as the present one would have to be founded: with the cessation of the war, the resumption of scientific activities, and the reestablishment of contact between different countries, that time may be judged to have now arrived. [Jones, 1920, p. 3]
[Jones, 1920, p. 3]
Jones clearly saw the creation of this journal as having political nuances—the widening of the psychoanalytic horizons; and, moreover, the insistence that the epicentre of English-speaking psychoanalysis would be Britain.
Jones’s editorial hand created a very distinctive style to these early volumes, in line with his intentions. Besides the original papers, a most interesting aspect of the early numbers is the variety of other material. There are many translations of German papers, including new ones by Freud; for instance the first volume, in 1920, has “A child is being beaten”, published the year before in the Zeitschrift für Psychanalyse and translated for publication in the journal (see Freud, 1919e, pp. 177–204). Jones was enormously industrious in commissioning reviews of books on psychoanalysis, of which there was a multitude at this time. He constantly found people to review literature from other languages, including French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish in the first issue. And he found people to review current papers on various key psychoanalytic topics such as dreams, childhood, clinical reports, as well as applied psychoanalysis. He drew on his wide contacts as a central figure in international psychoanalysis and constantly reaffirmed that position with this commissioning work.
It is clear he saw the journal as providing a wide-ranging information service for the English-speaking world. During this decade, the Bulletin of the International Psychoanalytical Association was actually published within the journal as an integral section with pagination following the rest of the journal. This includes a mass of important details concerning the histories of the growing number of psychoanalytical societies worldwide. There was little more that an Anglophone could want to inform himself of the up-to-the-minute state of the psychoanalytic world. It was more, much more, than a vehicle for the latest discoveries of the new science; it represented a whole community that was of interest to itself.
But this is the psychoanalytic world as presented by Jones, the great statesman and “fixer” of psychoanalysis. Jones’s enthusiasm and optimism shine out from these pages, his belief in Freud and psychoanalysis, and its future as an untroubled ascent of the mountain of knowledge facing the fledgling science. The great dissensions are little addressed. Jung hardly appears in these volumes. And Ferenczi’s active technique (Ferenczi, 1919; Ferenczi & Rank, 1924), also a post-war enthusiasm, is criticized in rather low key throughout the decade—see Alexander’s review of Ferenczi and Rank’s book (Alexander, 1925; also Glover, 1924, 1928; Jokl, 1927; Laforgue, 1929; Sachs, 1925).
So, Jones’s presence towers magisterially over the journal, as it did over British psychoanalysis during this and later decades. His enormous ambition and dedication are palpable in these pages. In the first issue of the journal, Jones summarized the advances in psychoanalysis hitherto as: technique, characterology, narcissism, and metapsychology (Jones, 1920). He clearly expresses his sense of an advancing powerful science; but what are the advances that will be recorded in the journal in the next ten years?
The decade ahead for the journal was, in fact, punctuated by a series of innovating texts by Freud: “Beyond the pleasure principle” (1920g), “Group psychology and the analysis of the ego” (1921c), “The ego and the id” (1923b), “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety” (1926d) and “The question of lay analysis” (1926e). The psychoanalytic world had to accommodate and absorb these new or revised ideas of Freud’s; and those advances determine to a considerable degree the themes most common in the journal during the 1920s. Especially, the new structural model described in “The ego and the id” gave rise to important debates which were started in this decade and which are represented in the journal.
One prominent theme is analysis of the ego and characterology (Abraham, 1925, 1926*;† Alexander, 1923, 1926; Federn 1926; Edward Glover, 1925; James Glover, 1926; Reich, 1928; Searl, 1929), which presages the development of ego-psychology in the 1930s—and Reich’s development of his idea of the defensive character armour.
The super-ego was newly formulated in 1923. It is of some interest that this concept, which seems to have such an intuitively correct quality, raised so many critical questions and debate when it was first postulated (Eder 1929; Fenichel, 1928; Issacs 1929; Jones, 1926*, 1929; Sachs, 1929; Searl, 1929). Jones’s paper, presented in Vienna, was given, possibly tactlessly, during his visit for the occasion of Freud’s seventieth birthday in May 1926. It was characteristically well thought out and, also characteristically, it was introduced as tentative whilst his style was declamatory. Freud, it would appear, did not pay much attention, since Jones had to write to him later to ask for his opinion, to which he got a mollifying but non-committal response.
As a result of your reminder [Freud wrote to Jones in November 1926], I have reread your paper on the superego and confirmed my first impression. All the obscurities and difficulties you point out really do exist. But one cannot remove them, even with the criteria which you stress. It does require fresh examination of accumulated impressions and experiences.
[Paskauskas 1993, p. 607]
And in the same letter Freud had placatingly said, “I myself have the impression that you sometimes overestimate the importance of the disagreements (‘dissensions’) that occurred also between us” (ibid., p. 607). This was the year before the dissensions between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud broke into the open—in 1927—when Freud and Jones were engaged in a dispute that taxed each of them to remain friends (Steiner, 1985).
However, topics of interest were developing at this stage outside of Freud’s inspiration. One such is female sexuality (Deutsch, 1925; Horney, 1924*, 1926; Jones, 1927; Lampl-De Groot, 1928; Muller-Braunschweig, 1926; Riviere, 1929*; Sachs, 1920, 1929); perhaps it was an interest especially in Berlin. In fact, there were many women coming into the psychoanalytic profession after the war. Women’s emancipation in society at large was increasing rapidly in the 1920s, and women considered entering the professions—those that would accept them. Psychoanalysis, as a new profession, was naturally more open to recruits. Statistically, the Berlin Society had more women members and associates than any other psychoanalytical society in the IPA—approaching 50% (the British Society was not so far behind with over 30%, while the rest of the IPA was under 20%). It is not surprising that, especially in Berlin, women analysts began to debate Freud’s hesitation in theorizing women’s sexuality.
It may be that the interest in psychoanalysing children was also a consequence of the increased numbers of women becoming psychoanalysts. This was an interest that developed in both London and Vienna. Hermine von Hug-Hellmuth (Vienna) published her foundational paper on child psychoanalysis in the journal in 1921*. It influenced both Anna Freud in Vienna and Melanie Klein in Berlin (and in London, from 1926) in their methods of conducting a child analysis. Their paths diverged, not least in 1924 after the murder of Hug-Hellmuth by her adopted nephew, upon whom she had practised a psychoanalytic form of child rearing (MacLean & Rappen, 1991). This shocking occurrence in Vienna led the Viennese to take a very circumspect, cautious view of the analysis of children, whilst Klein was much more intrepid. She had been booked to give a lecture in Vienna in December 1924—four months after the murder—where she described her rigorous interpretive technique. Its reception can only be imagined in this unhappy atmosphere. Klein’s uncompromising stance on deep interpretation led her to follow up contacts, through the Bloomsbury group (Strachey & Strachey, 1986), in London. Two papers of Klein’s (1924, 1926) were translated for the journal and, in 1927, after she settled in London, a symposium was published on child analysis in the journal, with papers by six British analysts (Klein*, Riviere, Searl, Sharpe, Glover, and Jones). This symposium was a defensive response to Anna Freud’s Einfürung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse (Four Lectures on Child Analysis) published (in German) in 1927, and believed in Britain to be an unfair appraisal of Klein’s play technique method of child analysis (Klein. 1926). Anna Freud’s gentle riposte to the journal’s symposium, published later, 1929*, in the journal, asserted caution and a unique educational dimension appropriate to child analysis. As is well known, the English publication of her Four Lectures was delayed until 1948.
In the same year, 1927, there was also a symposium on lay analysis following Freud’s published opinion in 1926. The new profession had absorbed huge numbers of new recruits following the First World War and the question of what qualified a person to practise psychoanalysis was a major question. Particularly in America, there was a spectre of quack medicine that psychoanalysis had to disassociate itself from (see Gay, 1988). In addition, the recent history of dissension had led to a suspicion that psychoanalysts, too, were victims of unconscious and even neurotic components in their relations with Freud and their colleagues as well as with patients. Beginning in Berlin, the various Societies began to establish formal Institutes for the training of new psychoanalysts (Berlin in 1920, London in 1924, Vienna in 1925, the French in 1926), starting with the insistence upon a personal “didactic” analysis.
The papers in this symposium were published prior to the IPA Congress at Innsbruck later that year, 1927, and much in response to Freud’s remarks on the subject in his short book (Freud, 1926e). Twenty-four analysts (Jones*, Sachs, Obendorf, Rickman, Glover, Brill, Jeliffe, Alexander, Muller-Brauschweig, Benedek, Reik, Roheim, Hitschman, Schilder, Nunberg, Felix Deutsch, Reich, Horney, Simmel, Sadger, Hárnik, Waelder, Jokl, and Ophuisjen, and two Societies, the Hungarian and the New York) contributed views.
From this “map” of topics and discussions, it is difficult, even invidious, to make a small selection. I have not made an effort to cover the whole breadth of opinion and debate. I have had to restrict myself in various ways. First of all, I excluded all the papers of Freud’s, on the assumption they are all well known and well consulted. Second, there are many rather short clinical accounts which are aimed at providing supporting evidence for psychoanalytic theory. I have excluded all these, too. There are also many brief papers reporting clinical curiosities and adventurous applications of psychoanalytic ideas. One could say that in the first years of the decade there is a curious mixture of naïve British psychoanalysis and mature, sophisticated, continental psychoanalysis. So, I have concentrated on papers that speak to substantial issues in the development of psychoanalysis as perceived with hindsight; and I have chosen only those that seem to have either (a) a high merit or (b) have achieved a classic status and reputation. Some papers had appeared in German previously and so the journal is not the date of first publication; nevertheless, all papers represent the first instance of English publication, which was the set purpose of the journal.
I realize, having made the selection, that there is a strong influence from both Berlin and Vienna. It makes me consider that the restoration of European culture and knowledge pushed psychoanalysis in Berlin to the fore, while Vienna, the foremost city for science before the war, had become merely the rump of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, far too big for the small country Austria had become, and thus impoverished economically and culturally Berlin, despite the defeat of Germany, nevertheless gained in reputation for its modernity, and this seemed to rub off on the psychoanalytic world. Here the first training institute was established (in 1920), the first policlinic (in 1920, by Eitingon), and eventually, the first psychoanalytically orientated inpatient service (in 1927), the Schloss Tegel, by Ernst Simmel (1929). It was perhaps to Berlin that Jones’s ambitions turned first for inspiration rather than Vienna—he sent a number of his would-be trainees to Berlin for their analyses—and wherefrom he attracted Melanie Klein, in 1926, as the analyst for his children and his wife.
My selection includes significant papers on: child analysis, sublimation, female sexuality, active technique, character and libidinal development, super-ego, the reality principle, and lay analysis. Thus, breadth of interest rather than depth of debate is what characterized the early years of the journal.
† An asterisk after the date indicates a paper republished in this volume.
Abraham, K. (1925). The influence of oral erotism on character-formation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 247–258.
Abraham, K. (1926). Character-formation on the genital level of libido-development. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 214–222.
Alexander, F. (1923). The castration complex in the formation of character. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 4: 11–42.
Alexander, F. (1925). Review of Entwicklungsziele Der Psychoanalyse by Sandor Ferenczi & Otto Rank (1924). International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 484–496.
Alexander, F. (1926). Neurosis and the whole personality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 340–352.
Deutsch, H. (1925). The psychology of women in relation to the functions of reproduction. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 405–418.
Eder, D. (1929). On the economics and the future of the super-ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 249–255.
Federn, P. (1926). Some variations in ego-feeling. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 434–444.
Fenichel, O. (1928). The clinical aspect of the need for punishment. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9: 47–70.
Ferenczi, S. (1919). Technical difficulties in the analysis of a case of hysteria. Zeitschrift für Psychanalyse, 5: 34–40.
Ferenczi, S., & Rank, O. (1924) Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse (The Development of Psychoanalysis). Vienna: Internationaler psychoana-lytischer Verlag.
Ferenczi, S., Abraham, K., Simmel, E., & Jones, E. (1921). Psychoanalysis and the War Neuroses. London: The International Psycho-Analytical Press, London.
Freud, A. (1927). Einfürung in die Technik der Kinderanalyse (Four Lectures on Child Analysis). Vienna: Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag.
Freud, A. (1929). On the theory of analysis of children. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 29–38.
Freud, S. (1919a). Lines of advance in psychoanalysis. S.E., 17: 157–168. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1919e). A child is being beaten. S.E., 17: 177–204.
Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. S.E., 18: 7–64. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1921c). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. S.E., 18: 67–143. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1923b). The ego and the id. S.E., 19: 3–66. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1926d). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S.E., 20: 77–175. London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. (1926e). The question of lay analysis. S.E., 20: 179–258. London: Hogarth Press.
Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A Life for our Time. London: Dent.
Glover, E. (1924). “Active therapy” and psychoanalysis—a critical review. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 5: 269–311.
Glover, E. (1925). Notes on oral character formation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 131–154.
Glover, E. (1928). Lectures on technique in psycho-analysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9: 7–46; 181–218.
Glover, J. (1926). The conception of the ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 414–419.
Horney, K. (1924). On the genesis of the castration complex in women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 5: 50–65.
Horney, K. (1926). The flight from womanhood: the masculinity-complex in women, as viewed by men and by women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 324–339.
Hug-Hellmuth, H. von (1921). On the technique of child-analysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2: 287–305.
Issacs, S. (1929). Privation and guilt. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 335–347.
Jokl, R. H. (1927). The mobilizing of the sense of guilt—a contribution to the problem of active therapy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 8: 479–485.
Jones, E. (1920). Editorial. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1: 3–5.
Jones, E. (1925). Mother-right and the sexual ignorance of savages. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 109–130.
Jones, E. (1926). The origin and structure of the super-ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 303–311.
Jones, E. (1927). The early development of female sexuality. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 8: 459–472.
Jones, E. (1929). Fear, guilt and hate. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 383–397.
Klein, M. (1924). The role of the school in the libidinal development of the child. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 5: 312–331.
Klein, M. (1926). Infant analysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 31–63.
Laforgue, R. (1929) “Active” psycho-analytical technique and the will to recovery. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 411–422.
Lampl-de Groot, A. (1928). The evolution of the Oedipus Complex in women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9: 332–345.
MacLean, G., & Rappen, U. (1991). Hermine Hug-Hellmuth: Her Life and Work. London: Routledge.
Malinowski, B. (1923). Psychoanalysis and anthropology. Nature, 112: 650–651.
Miller, E. (1940). The Neuroses in War. London: Macmillan.
Muller-Braunschweig, C. (1926). The genesis of the feminine super-ego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7: 359–362.
Paskauskas, A. (1993). The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, 1908–1939. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Reich, W. (1928). Criticism of recent theories of the problem of neurosis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9: 227–240.
Riviere, J. (1929). Womanliness as a masquerade. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 303–313.
Sachs, H. (1920). The wish to be a man. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1: 262–267.
Sachs, H. (1925). Metapsychological points of view in technique and theory. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 6: 5–12.
Sachs, H. (1929). One of the motive factors in the formation on the superego in women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 39–50.
Searl, N. (1929). Difficulties in child development. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 476–480.
Simmel, E. (1929). Psycho-analytic treatment in a sanatorium. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10: 70–89.
Steiner, R. (1985). Some thoughts about tradition and change arising from an examination of the British Psychoanalytical Society’s controversial discussions (1943–1944). International Review of Psychoanalysis, 12: 27–71.
Strachey, J., & Strachey, A. (1986). In: P. Meisel & W. Kendrick (Eds.) Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924–1925. London: Chatto and Windus.