Freud's Free Clinics

1919
By 1919 plans for an official psychoanalytic free clinic were already afoot in
Berlin. The Berlin clinic project had actually been drawn up at least ten years
earlier in 1909 when Max Eitingon and Karl Abraham joined forces to promote
psychoanalysis. By 1910 they had constituted the German Psychoanalytic
Association (Deutsche Psychoanalytische Gesellschaft, or DPG) as a
branch of the IPA, and within that the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, as well
as a training institute and even the first stages of their outpatient treatment
facility. Berlin’s creative energy appealed to talented urban newcomers like
Eitingon and Abraham, both recently arrived from training in Zurich and
both self-reliant Jews. ”Things are moving! On the 27th the Berlin Psycho-
Analytic Society will meet for the first time,” Abraham had written to Freud
in August 1908. 28 Their sketchy first Poliklinic for Psychoanalytic Treatment
of Nervous Disorders appeared at the end of that year, a modest clinic that,
ten years later in 1920, became the cornerstone of an already imposing branch
society of the IPA. 29 Freud liked the winsome Abraham for his “unruffled
spirits and tenacious confidence,” but he had the greatest faith in Eitingon. 30
Max Yefimovich Eitingon (figure 6) was a small round-faced man with
short, dark hair parted carefully to the side, a neatly trimmed moustache, and
6 Max Eitingon (Library of the
Boston Psychoanalytic Society
and Institute)
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