Anne Raulin
From New York to Vienna, Kardinerand Freud: A Close Encounter
During the 1920s, Vienna endured the hardship of a post- war realityand inaugurated a social democratic municipal government. As hadbeen the case previously under the Habsburg empire, the city remaineda significant attraction for those who wanted to train in psychoanal-ysis: this was true for many Americans from New York. The experi-ence of Abram Kardiner who came to Vienna to enter into analysiswith Sigmund Freud in the early 1920s is discussed here, revealingthe closeness of the two men, in terms of family history, perception oftheir Jewishness, and their theoretical endeavors, notwithstandingsome discrepancies. The educational project that Anna Freud formedin Vienna with Dorothy Burlingham, also from New York, is subse-quently outlined. Using oral history archives from Columbia University,this anthropological approach seeks to highlight the urban, social andpolitical contexts that shaped- more or less consciously- the history ofpsychoanalysis and its expansion beyond Vienna.
" Fin- de- siècle Vienna" has become, thanks to numerous and excellentcritical works, a point of reference for the understanding of Euro-pean cultural history. American historian Carl E. Schorske, one of itsadvocates, praised the city's astonishing innovative power at the turnof the 20th century:" The Viennese intelligentsia had invented almostsimultaneously in all fields new movements that had emerged in allthe cultural spheres of Europe under the name of' Vienna schools',particularly in psychology, art history or music." This article focuseson a later but equally singular period, that of the 1920s, particularly
1 Carl E. Schorske: Vienne fin de siècle. Politique et culture. Ausdem Deutschen von Yves Thoraval und Eric Vigne, Vorwort JacquesLe Rider. Paris 2017[ 1961], p. 34-35.