Freud's Free Clinics

1919
human sense of inferiority to the pernicious overall lack of Gemeinschaftgefuehl.
That May of 1919, in a landslide election that would be repeated in 1927, the
Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) triumphed over the Christian Socials
in Austria’s first secret, balloted election. Women voted for the first time
under the umbrella of universal suffrage and brought to the election their
concerns for family health and their acute awareness of the need for strong
governmental action to stem the tide of tuberculosis, malnutrition, and poor
housing conditions then decimating the city’s children. Freud signed the
electoral petition in favor of the Social Democrats. 2 The plebiscite ushered in
a socialist government that lasted until its violent destruction by the Austro-
Fascists in 1934. While the social democratic party had been an increasingly
forceful presence on the Austrian political landscape since 1897, their representatives
finally gained a majority in this election, winning 100 of the 165
municipal council seats. The new social democratic Rathaus, the city council
of Vienna, used its firm majority to promote a highly innovative program of
community policies and to redesign virtually every municipal resource.
Red Vienna’s newly elected politicians and civil servants were at first uneasy
about the presence of Paul Federn and other elected politicianpsychoanalysts
loyal to Sigmund Freud at the Rathaus meetings. Federn was
an imposing man. Very tall, with a booming tremulous voice, brilliant dark
eyes, and a long black beard, his appearance fell just short of menacing. But
his social position was thoroughly standard for the psychoanalyst of 1919: a licensed
physician, a representative for Vienna’s First District, active in the Socialist
Organization of Physicians of Vienna, and a board member of the Vienna
Settlement Association. “Ideologically most analysts were liberals,”
recalled Federn’s friend Richard Sterba. “Their sympathies, like those of most
Viennese intellectuals, were with the Social Democrats.“ 3 With high moral
principles and a passion for thoughtful relief work that, even many years later,
caused his family to dub him a “one-man policlinic,” Federn quickly became
an asset to Vienna’s new social democratic mayor Jakob Reumann. 4
Reumann was a kindly broad-shouldered former wood turner who had edited
the Arbeiterzeitung since 1900. The mayoralty offered him a chance to
demonstrate how effectively the new social democratic party could apply social
welfare strategies to Vienna’s postwar economic crisis. In addition to
helping Vienna become a separate province, Reumann enforced broadscale
public health and child welfare policies. His first priority was to rebuild a viable
infrastructure for urban sanitation and food distribution, and he was
hardly averse to receiving foreign assistance for the city’s needs. Under such
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