Theodor Reik

Theodor Reik (May 12, 1888 to December 31, 1969) was an accomplished and prominent psychoanalyst, and one of Sigmund Freud’s first students in Vienna. Among his other accomplishments, Reik wrote the first dissertation on psychoanalysis.

From Reppen, Joseph. "Reik, Theodor (1888-1969)." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. 2005. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Feb. 2015 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Toward the end of his life Reik, who grew a beard, resembled the older Freud and lived modestly, surrounded by photographs of Freud from childhood to old age. He died on December 31, 1969, after a long illness.
Natterson says, of Reik: "In many ways, Reik is the epitome of the sensitive aesthete, the pleasure-loving, erotic, highly intellectual, secular Jewish scholar. These characteristics are to be treasured" (Natterson, 1966).
Theodor Reik, disciple of Freud, Secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, author of over 20 books and hundreds of papers on literature, music, religion, analytic technique, and masochism, founder of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) in New York, an analyst in four major cities who wrote in a confessional way about his life, loves, failures, and triumphs, occupies a unique place in the history of psychoanalysis.

biography

Reik came from humble beginnings.  His parents, Max and Caroline, were lower-middle-class Jews,  The Reiks had four children; Theodor was the third. All four children attended public schools in Vienna.  His father worked as a government clerk; he died when Theodor was just eighteen. [SIC: Theodor was the sixth of seven children; a sister died at age 1 and there was a stillborn child also.]

At age eighteen, Reik was accepted at the University of Vienna, where he studied, psychology, French, and German literature. He was awarded his PhD in 1912, at the age of tweny-four.  The topic of his dissertation was “Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony.”  It was while studying for his doctorate that Reik met Freud, in 1910. Freud became a father figure to the young man, a role Freud would play for the rest of Theodor’s life. Two years after their first meeting, Reik became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

In 1914, Reik moved to Berlin and underwent analysis with Karl Abraham, who was a collaborator with Freud. However, when World War I began, Reik enlisted and served as an officer in the Austrian cavalryfor three years, from 1915 to 1918; he saw combat in Montenegro and Italy. Reik was decorated for bravery.

After the war, Reik returned to Vienna, where, following the resignation of Otto Rank (one of Freud’s closest colleagues), he became Secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Over the next ten years, Reik practiced psychoanalysis and wrote prolifically. (It is said that Freud once asked Reik,” Why do you piss around so much? Just piss in one spot.”) 

Despite his lack of a medical degree, Freud vehemently defended Reik’s abilities, writing in 1926, in his friend and colleague’s defense, “The Question of Lay Analysis.”  Reik was being prosecuted in Austria for quackery. 

Following the trial, Reik moved back to Berlin, where he lived and worked from 1928 to 1934. In Berlin, he once again enjoyed the acclaim he had previously experienced as a popular teacher at the psychoanalytic institute.  However, as he watched the Nazis rise to power, he moved The Hague, where he continued to work.  These years were rocky; his first wife, Ella, and mother of his son, Arthur, died.  He later met and married a woman named Marija, with whom he had two children, Theodora and Miriam.

As Nazi power continued to grow, once again Reik felt compelled to move himself and his family. The four of them relocated in New York. However, due to his lack of a medical degree, the New York Psychoanalytic Society did not allow Reik to practice. 

Reik’s sense of personal ethics would not allow him to take a position as a “research analyst,” a position in which he could ostensibly still practice (as many people did).  The decision caused many financial problems for Reik and his family.  To help him through this difficult time, Karl Abraham treated him for free. Freud, for a period, sent Reik 200 marks a month to see his friend through, but not first without some chastisement.  Freud wrote: “What ill wind has blown you, just you, to America? You must have known how amiably lay analysts would be received there by our colleagues for whom psychoanalysis is nothing more that one of the hand-maidens of psychiatry.”

Despite his mentor’s objections, Reik carried on and over the next ten years, established a practice and earned the esteem of his American colleagues. In 1945, he founded the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). Riek’s influence on the psychoanalytic and lay community continued to grow in the second half of the twentieth century. His many books influenced the general public, and his influence within NPAP continued to grow. From his original institute, many new institutes emerged, making Reik one of the “major promulgator[s] of non-medical analysis in the United States.”

Riek may have been popular with general readers because of his conversational style and inclusion of well-known literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Flaubert, and Goethe.  His best known works include his autobiography Fragments of a Great Confession (1949), Listening with the Third Ear (1948); the monumental Masochism in Modern Man (1949); Surprise and the Psychoanalyst (1935); his recollection of Freud, From Thirty Years with Freud (1940); applied psychoanalysis of the Bible in Mystery on the Mountain (1958); anthropology in Ritual (1958); and sexuality in Of Love and Lust (1959), Creation of Woman (1960), and The Psychology of Sex Relations (1961); and music in The Haunting Melody (1960).

Source: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, ©2005 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved.

Lay Analysis

From The Confederation of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Professional Community

While analysts on both sides of the Atlantic participated in the creation of the IPA, the organizational history of American psychoanalysis differed significantly from that of Europe. Although most psychoanalysts in Europe and the United States were physicians, membership in most European psychoanalytic societies was open to individuals from a broad spectrum of disciplines and professional backgrounds. Many of the early analysts in Freud’s circle were non-physicians (Roazen, 1971: Wallerstein, 1998). Freud maintained that medical training should not be a prerequisite for psychoanalytic training and practice, and actively supported the psychoanalytic careers of non-medical aspirants (Freud, 1926). From its outset, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was open to talented persons from all disciplines. Freud was particularly eager to encourage academics and scholars from the humanities who could “apply” psychoanalytic knowledge to their respective fields of endeavor. Otto Rank, Theodore Reik, and Hans Sachs were among the first of these “lay analysts” trained especially to work in the area of “applied psychoanalysis” (Schroter, 2004).

Freud formulated his most impassioned and comprehensive argument in favor of this position when a psychologist-psychoanalyst from the Vienna Society, Theodor Reik, was sued for practicing medicine without a license (Freud, 1926). In this monograph, The Question of Lay Analysis, Freud articulated his vision of psychoanalysis as an autonomous profession, independent of medicine, with full professional education for new analysts to be provided by free-standing psychoanalytic training institutes, then starting to be formed.

• Wikipedia, Brainy Quotes, * The Evolution of Psychoanalytic Technique  edited by Martin S. Bergmann, Frank R. Hartman.  Biographical Sketches: Theodor Reik (1888-1969), page 73-75.