Psychoanalysis & the Viennese way of doing things
Sep 23rd, 2007 by Paul Moor
The innumerable cross-connections over the course of my eighty-three years sometimes take even me by surprise. The other evening here in Berlin I dined with a Swiss-born Californian and member of the Cal Tech faculty in Pasadena, Andreas Aebi, I’ve cherished as a friend for thirty-five years now - and my subsequent Skype-talking about that dinner with my blogfather Perry Nelson over in exotic Knoxville, Tennessee landed me at the target-end of Perry’s paternal whip to take a stroll down Memory Lane and write here about my long friendship with Andy’s father-in-law, nicknamed Romi, better known as one of his day’s most famous psychoanalysts, Ralph R. Greenson, undoubtedly most widely known of all as Marilyn Monroe’s last psychotherapist, who the night she died, summoned by the uniquely qualified housekeeper he himself had recommended, broke the window into her Brentwood bedroom and found her dead - under circumstances that keep alive seething arguments a bit of Internet Googling will excavate for you - in the event you really give that much of a damn.
In 1971, the International Psychoanalytic Association held its biennial convention for the first time ever in Vienna, where it had all begun in Prof. Dr. Sigmund Freud’s neurological practice at Berggasse 19, and my fascination with psychoanalysis (since then substantially diminished, I might mention - perhaps another story for another occasion) galvanized me to seek an assignment to write about that event for the first-rate Hamburg weekly newspaper Die Zeit. (I have the impression such weekly newspapers, which include The Observer in London, published in affiliation with The Guardian, originally The Manchester Guardian, my unrivalled favorite British daily newspaper, remain comparatively unknown in my erstwhile homeland.) I’d previously written extensively for Die Zeit about the retrial of one of the most horrific murder cases even in Germany’s history, concerning a teenage compulsive sadistic child-murderer named Jürgen Bartsch, and those writings (there comes yet another stroll down Memory Lane, for still another time) had brought me into correspondence with the prominent Los Angeles psychoanalyst Frederick Hacker, né Friedrich Hacker in Vienna.
I knew about his friendship with Freud’s brilliant daughter Anna, who in London had carved out her own personal niche in the profession she’d coome to share with her father, and I wrote Hacker to ask about my chances to interview her if I did make it to Vienna. He wrote right back that he could guarantee me that if she gave any interviews at all he’d personally see to it that I got one, and that clinched the still pending assignment I sought from Die Zeit. In that same letter Dr. Hacker delighted me with his invitation to join him for dinner as soon as I arrived in Vienna.
I’d put up in an inexpensive Pension in the Léhargasse (named after the composer of several quintessentially Viennese operetta gems including The Merry Widow) favored by less important singers temporarily appearing at the Vienna State Opera. Hacker and his lady had pulled off the coup of securing accommodations in Vienna’s most luxurious Hotel Sacher, where I appeared at the appointed time. In the lobby he said, almost apologetically, “I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve invited the Greensons also to join us.”
Mind - !
I’d first heard Ralph Greenson’s name in New York from Lucy Freeman, who’d written an unexpected best-seller about her own introductory experience on an analyst’s couch entitled Freedom from Fears; that book attracted so much attention it got Lucy mentioned in the traditional year-end poem that appeared annually in The New Yorker: “Peace to the id of Lucy Freeman.” (Poor Lucy - it probably did psychoanalysis per se no favor when years later she published a sequel called Farewell to Fears - about the second complete time-consuming and of course costly full-scale psychoanalysis she felt she still needed.) Lucy at that time had mentioned Dr. Greenson’s name in connection with the most famous of his various famous patients starring in and directing Hollywood movies; I already knew him as the author of The Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis, which had swiftly established itself as a primary text for psychoanalytic candidates in training and which I’d consulted in writing about Jürgen Bartsch.
. . . But first I want to recount - for the first time ever in print, I feel certain, for Fred Hacker strictly forbade me even to hint at it in what I wrote about that international convention - the true, deliciously Viennese story of how that convention - finally in Freud’s own city, so full of horrible Nazi associations - had in fact come about.
Psychoanalysts all over the world tended to take a unique attitude towards Anna Freud that gave me personally considerable pause on purely psychological grounds; one could almost say they figuratively genuflected before her, in a unique way, as some sort of latterday mother goddess. At the International Psychoanalytic’s previous convention in Amsterdam, a strong movement had supported scheduling the next meeting in Vienna, but everyone knew such a project would entail, as a sine qua non, Anna Freud’s assent.
Those in favor of it included Dr. Hacker, her fellow Viennese-born emigrant, who enjoyed friendly relations with her. He also enjoyed cordial relations with Bruno Kreisky, Austria’s Chancellor - and by a fortuitous coincidence also Jewish. In conversation with Miss Freud (nobody ever called her anything else in English), trying to find some sort of solution acceptable to her, Dr. Hacker, running out of persuasive arguments, finally asked her almost in desperation whether a personal invitation from the Federal Chancellor of Austria would do the trick. To that bait she finally did rise - and Hacker (who as I recall even sported one of those numerous honorary official Viennese titles, such as Geheimrat, “Privy Counsellor”, or some such) made tracks for Vienna, where he obtained an appointment with Chancellor Kreisky as soon as possible.
As Hacker told me the story in Vienna thirty-six years ago, Kreisky unhesitatingly said he’d most gladly extend such a personal invitation - but also said he’d never had anything to do with the likes of Anna Freud and would Hacker please write the letter for him, which he’d sign and immediately get off to London.
Glad to, Hacker said - and wasted no time before flying from Vienna to London to make certain he beat the letter there. By telephone he reached Miss Freud, and off-handedly mentioned where he’d checked in, then figuratively toe-tapped until the anticipated return call came from Miss Freud in Hampstead.
She declared herself honored, flattered, overwhelmed, and so on, at appropriate Viennese length - but, she said, she’d never in her entire life had anything to do with such highly placed political figures, so would her and Kreisky’s old mutual friend Hacker please write her response for her?
Glad to, said Hacker - and did.
And of course that did indeed do the trick. If I as a newly naturalized German may lapse into my acquired German (well, Wienerisch) for just a moment:
Das sind Wiener G’schichten. . . .
