Freud's Free Clinics

1922
finale banquet closed with Jones’s humorous—he said so himself—speech
about the Berlin clinic’s anonymous patron, widely rumored to be Eitingon.
Leaning on his gold-knobbed walking stick, Jones said, “In English we have
two notable proverbs: ‘Charity begins at home’ and ‘Murder will out.’ If now
we apply the mechanisms of condensation and displacement to these we
reach the conclusions that ‘Murder begins at home,’ a fundamental tenet of
psychoanalysis, and ‘Charity will out,’ which is illustrated by the difficulty of
keeping secret the name of the generous donor of the Berlin Policlinic.” 34
By the time of the IPA’s seventh congress the interest in coming to Berlin
to teach, study, and work reflected the improved international relations that
allowed for candid intellectual exchanges between eastern and western European
psychoanalysts. Sándor Radó had recently moved westward, from Budapest
to Berlin, to join the newly created institute. Fenichel traveled back
and forth between Vienna and Berlin. Helene Deutsch, who would spend the
next two years in Berlin’s as Freud’s special envoy, summarized the main
events of the Berlin congress to the Vienna society’s meeting of October 18
and described the state of the psychoanalytic movement including its theoretical
advances. Not to be outdone by the implicit competition with Berlin,
at the same meeting Hitschmann noted that the Ambulatorium’s activities
were progressing and announced that two lecture series would begin in early
November. He would deliver An Introduction to Psycho-Analysis and Felix
Deutsch would teach a special course called What Must the Practicing Physician
Know About Psycho-Analysis? At times Hitschmann felt overwhelmed
by his responsibilities as clinic director, but he also wanted to help his Viennese
colleagues to promote their clinic much as the Berliners had done for
the IPA visitors. 35
By the end of the congress Poliklinik staff realized how their working conditions
had been strained, in part because of the heavy traffic of patients, interns,
and members, but also because of its constantly expanding pedagogical
activities. “Our work,” Eitingon complained “needs more and more
space, but the housing shortage prevents [us] from extending our premises.”
Freud agreed, hoping “that individuals or societies may be found elsewhere
to follow Eitingon’s example, and bring similar institutions into existence.” 36
Encouraging words indeed, but Freud was reminding the analysts of their
need for vigilance and priorities in at least two areas. First, as even Jones had
recognized (and as Eitingon and Simmel had done in Berlin), the psychoanalytic
leadership throughout the IPA had to incorporate social services into
mental health and not the other way around. Government-sponsored clinics
could become bureaucratic weapons in the hands of traditional psychiatry’s
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