Question for Siderea

[alexxkay]

...or anyone else who wants to chime in, I guess.

What was the state of psychotherapy/psychiatry/whatever-they-called-it-then in the late 1930's? What was the dominant 'school'? What were the promising-looking upstarts? (Note: for my purposes, they need not actually have *had* long-term success, just looked potentially good during that period.) I can look up the details by google, I'm just looking for the right keywords to start with.

[My job leads down some strange pathways at times...]

Comments

[siderea]

In Europe or in the US?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

The story is cosmopolitan, so either/both.

[siderea]

I need to check my textbook (which is at home), but since Rogers didn't get going until the 1950s, really, I think that's the hey-day of Psychoanalysis (Freud) and his immediate descendents: (Jung), "Individual Psychology" (Adler). I think Psychodrama (Moreno) was active then, having started in the 1920s, but I don't know how widespread it was; it never really caught on in the US the way it did in Europe (even though Moreno was in the US by then).

Gestalt and Behaviorist didn't exist yet. It was all psychiatry then; "psychotherapy" is, I think, a later term (check the OED). Until Rogers, it was all done by MDs. (Not necessarily MDs in psychiatry, mind you; it was a young field.)

More info, forthcoming.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Thanks much! I hadn't even considered Psychodrama in the context of my current problem. Not sure it's the right answer, but it's a provocative direction to consider.

[siderea]

Aha! The term for Jungian therapy which I left out above is "Analytic Psychotherapy". I don't know that the term is period to the 1930s, but I presume so.

From the textbook...

Freud published "The Id and the Super Ego" in 1923. He died in 1939. "When Nazi persecution forced many of the outstanding European analysts [Freudians] to migrate to this country, the United States became, for a time, the world center of psychoanalysis [Freudian psychotherapy]."

Jung worked with Freud (well, Jung thought he was Freud's collaborator, Freud thought Jung was his disciple) until 1911, when Jung published his views how how it should be done and went forth to found his own school of training. Presumably he was going great guns by the 1930s.

Adler managed to piss off Freud earlier, in 1908, but things didn't come to a head until 1911 -- boy, that was a bad year for Freud -- culiminating in Adler resigning from the presidency of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and leading a faction away from it to found the "Society for Free Psychoanalytic Research", where "Free" is to be read "Free of Freud". The book says

During the next decade, with the exception of the war years, Adler and his coworkers developed the social view of the neurosis. Their focus was primarily clinical, although as early as 1908 Adler (1914) had demonstrated an interest in children, families, and education. In 1922 Adler initiated what was perhaps the first community-outreach program, child-guidance centers within the community. These centers were located in public schools and were directed by psychologists who served without pay. [...] Twenty-eight such centers existed in Vienna until 1934, when an unfriendly government closed them. This form of center was transported to the United States by [disciples]. [...] In 1926 Adler was invited to the United States to lecture and until 1934, when fascism took hold in Austria, he divided his time between the United States, where he was on the medical faculty of Long Island College of Medicine, and abroad.[...]The resurgence of the Adlerian school after the dispersion from Europe was an uphill effort. Personal hardships of refugee Adlerians were compounded by the existing psychological climate in this country. The economic depression still prevailed. The Freudian school held a near monopoly, both in the treatment area and with repect to appointments in medical schools. Some Adlerians defected; others became crypto-Adlerians.

Do you need more info? If so, could you tune your query a bit more?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

No, that's plenty, especially since I am on salary for this task, and you are not :-)

Given the timing, I have a perverse desire to posit that Freud faked his own death, but I expect I will get over it. Suspension of disbelief works better with entirely fictional characters, after all.

[siderea]

Hey, Jung didn't die (allegedly) until 1985. So if you wanted to argue he was some sort of undead psychotherapeutic lich-lord, you'd be golden.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Sadly, no. The story actually demands someone who dropped out of mainstream society in the late 30's, so Jung doesn't fit the bill. But Freud might, if he faked his own death. My current project does not involve any undead :-) [Though some other projects under consideration do -- zombies: always popular!]