Freud's Free Clinics

1930
In truth his work hardly differed from Simmel’s at Tegel or Eitingon’s at the
Poliklinik, but he did fail to persuade the analysts that he remained on their
avant-garde.
Meanwhile, in Frankfurt, Erich Fromm and an elite group from the local
psychoanalytic institute successfully opened a new clinic on a straightforward
social democratic model. “Free or low-cost analyses . . . [are] at least a
small beginning,” Karl Landauer told Eitingon, of the plans he and Heinrich
Meng had proposed. 14 The Frankfurt clinic, the last of the free outpatient
treatment centers attributable to Freud’s Budapest speech, would last only
two years. Nevertheless, it was provided with modest but adequate assets for
the moment, and the Frankfurt clinic was able to secure the level of serious
academic authority that had eluded all the other clinics. Landauer’s former
analysand, the social philosopher Max Horkheimer, had just been appointed
professor at the University in Frankfurt and simultaneously director of
the Institute for Social Research. Landauer was thrilled. Horkheimer “has
given his energetic support to psychoanalysis,” he told Eitingon,” and wants
close collaboration between his institute and ours. We will, as far as I can
see, move there and also have room for a treatment center.” Freud too was
pleased and sent Horkheimer letters of appreciation. 15 The clinic started
small but promising and, except for its remarkable connection to its host,
the Institut für Sozialforschung, it stayed quite modest. The customary ten
to fifteen patient waiting list began even before the clinic opened. Eventually
five patients at a time were seen by the part-time analysts. More homogeneous
as a group than in Berlin or Vienna, the patients were almost exclusively
intellectuals associated with the parent institute or its affiliates and
chiefly young academics ages twenty to thirty. While the caseload was different—no
farmers or laborers or even children were treated in Frankfurt—
structurally the clinic was similar to those in other cities. Clinical sessions
were scheduled to last forty-five minutes. Diagnoses were disproportionately
male diagnoses: impotence, psychogenic sterility and hysteria and, typically
for an academic milieu, “existential conflicts which have not been overcome,
character disturbances, work inhibitions.” 16 Interestingly, patients
could transfer their analysis between the Berlin and Frankfurt clinics. Landauer,
who saw the advantages of sharing resources between the two German
clinics, sought practical advice from Eitingon. “I should like to ask you
about the terms under which you appoint the assistants in the Berlin Institute.
I mean most particularly the financial side,” he wrote with the implicit
understanding that Frankfurt’s proficiency on the theoretical side was irreproachable.
Erich Fromm, along with Landauer and Meng, consulted with
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