Theodor Reik

Lay analyst Theodor Reik was born on 5/12/1888, in Vienna, & died on 12/31/69, in New York. He was the 3rd child of four born to the cultured, lower-middle-class Jewish family of Max & Caroline Reik. Reik's father was a low-salaried government clerk who died when Theodor was 18. Freud became a father figure for the rest of his life. He attended public schools in Vienna & entered the University of Vienna, aged 18, where he studied psychology, French & German literature. He received a PhD in 1912, writing the 1st psychoanalytic dissertation, on Flaubert's The Temptation of St Anthony. He met Freud in 1910, and two years later became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. In 1914-15 he was in analysis with Karl Abraham in Berlin &, with the outbreak of WWI, served as an officer in the Austrian cavalry from 1915 to '18, seeing combat in Montenegro & Italy & being decorated for bravery. Following the resignation of Otto Rank, Reik became the Secretary of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. For a decade he practiced in Vienna & began to write so extensively that Freud asked him: "Why do you piss around so much? Just piss in one spot" (Natterson, '66). Freud wrote "The Question of Lay Analysis" in defense of Reik, who'd been prosecuted under the quackery laws of Austria for practicing medicine. Reik moved to Berlin, where he lived & practiced from 1928 'til 1934 & again was a celebrated teacher at the psychoanalytic institute. Fearing the rise of the Nazis, he left for The Hague, where he continued practicing & teaching. During this time his 1st wife Ella, mother of his son Arthur, died. He married Marija. Two children were born of this, Theodora & Miriam. Still fearful of the Nazis, he moved to NYC where, as a non-medical analyst, he was denied full membership in the Psychoanalytic Society. Reik wouldn't accept the position of research analyst, altho he could have made a "charade" of agreement & practiced, as many did. Reik experienced financial difficulties for many periods. He was treated gratis by both Karl Abraham & Freud & for a time he received financial support of 200 marks a month from Freud. After he wrote for help in 1938, Freud wrote back: "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 handmaidens of psychiatry" (Hale, '95). Reik persevered, however, building a practice, & soon a group of colleagues centered around him &, in 1948, the Nat'l Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis was founded. Reik's influence on the development of nonmedical analysis in the USA was great. Not only did his many books have a profound effect on the general reading public but his influence through the NPAP (Nat'l Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis) & the institutes that split from it suggest that Reik was the major promulgator of non-medical analysis in the USA. Reik's psychoanalytic studies include discussions of such writers as Beer-Hofmann, Flaubert & Schnitzler as well as Shakespeare, Goethe & Gustav Mahler, to name but a few. He had a unique way of communicating & his writing & conversational style was free associational. His autobiography is to be found in his many works. Among his better known are: Listening with the Third Ear ('48); the monumental Masochism in Modern Man ('49); Surprise & the Psychoanalyst ('35); his recollection of Freud, From Thirty Years with Freud ('40); an autobiographical study, Fragment of a Great Confession ('49); applied psychoanalysis of the Bible in Mystery on the Mountain ('58); anthropology in Ritual ('58); & sexuality in Of Love and Lust ('59), Creation of Woman ('60), & The Psychology of Sex Relations ('61); & music in The Haunting Melody ('60). Toward the end of his life Reik, who grew a beard, resembled the older Freud & lived modestly, surrounded by photos of Freud from childhood to old age.