More than a few people assisted with this book. I am grateful to Edward Nersessian and Robert Penzer for their invitation to participate in the 2013 Helix Center conference at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute on “Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis” and to Steffen Krüger for his invitation to take part in the 2008 Berlin conference “In the Service of the Ego: Ernst Kris Today.” Gary Cohen at the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota, Nellie Thompson at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and Helen Fehervary in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Ohio State University, provided forums in which I could present my research. Otterbein University’s School of Arts and Sciences, and its dean, Paul Eisenstein, provided continuing research support through the university’s Ursula Holtermann and Humanities endowments.
I was fortunate to have the help of Margaret McAleer at the Library of Congress, Dr. Claudia Wedepohl at the Warburg Institute Archive, and Allen Reichert at Otterbein’s Courtright Library. Carren Kaston provided invaluable research assistance. I want to thank Andy Spencer, past editor of Communications from the International Brecht Society, for his advice on issues of translation.
My thanks go to Judith Wechsler, Richard Woodfield, and the anonymous reviewers of Yale University Press for their very helpful recommendations on the manuscript. I am grateful to Robert Baldock, Melissa Bond, and Rachael Lonsdale at the London office of the press for their commitment to and support for this work.
This book began from a series of conversations with Anna Kris Wolff, Anton O. Kris, and Leonie Gombrich. I am very pleased here to be able to express my gratitude for their generosity, their time, and their perspectives. Eric Kandel, Arno Mayer, Debora Silverman, and Katharine Weber provided much appreciated encouragement as the book moved forward. Jim Amelang read more than one version of the manuscript as it progressed and I benefited greatly from his comments and suggestions.
Throughout, my wife Cindy patiently listened to, read, and responded to all and any of my thoughts on the book, from the first of them to the last.
It was my great good fortune to have known Carl Schorske as an advisor and friend, and the talks I had with him about the book remain with me. In these acknowledgments I would like to pay tribute to his work and memory.