LORAND, SÁNDOR (1893-1987)

Sándor Lorand, a physician, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychiatry, was born on December 2, 1893, in Kassa, Hungary, and died on July 29, 1987, on Long Island, New York.

Born into an Orthodox Jewish family that had been farmers for two generations, Lorand first studied theology, then philosophy (earning a PhD), and finally medicine at the University of Pressburg (now Bratislava), where he earned his medical degree in 1920. The 1918 Budapest psychoanalytic congress impressed him "so much that [he decided] to become a psychoanalyst" (Lorand, 1963). He discovered the writings of Sándor Ferenczi, took the initiative of writing to him to discuss the latter's theory of hypnotic suggestion, and attended Ferenczi lectures in the medical faculties. While working as a physician attached to the hospital at Kosice in Czechoslovakia, Lorand arranged in 1921 for Ferenczi to present a paper on "Psychoanalysis for the General Practitioner" to his colleagues. During 1923-24, Lorand was analyzed by Ferenczi and did training work with Paul Federn and Vilma Kovach.

That same year Lorand return to the hospital at Kosice and, following Friedlander in the Netherlands, experimented with a technique for painless childbirth that utilized hypnosis. Despite Ferenczi's wish that Lorand remain in Czechoslovakia to disseminate psychoanalysis, he decided to emigrate because of the unstable political situation. He settled in New York in 1925 and, with the encouragement of Professor Kirby and Abraham A. Brill, became an American citizen and retook his medical exams. He established a private practice in psychoanalysis and also worked at the Mental Health Clinic of Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1926 he arranged for Ferenczi to lecture at the American Association for Psychoanalysis and at the New School in New York.

Lorand was a training and supervising analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, where he taught analytical theory and technique to several generations of candidates. He wrote numerous papers, among others on fetishism, nudism, the character of inventors, depressive states, perversions and fairy tales, and liliputian dreams. The range of his writings bears witness to his anthropological and clinical focus, in the tradition of Ferenczi and Géza Róheim. Lorand dedicated Clinical Studies in Psychoanalysis (1950) to Ferenczi and edited Psychoanalysis and Culture (1951) in honor of Géza Róheim.

Michelle Moreau Ricaud

See also: Hungarian School; New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

Bibliography

Lorand, Sándor. (1946). Technique of psychoanalytic therapy. New York: International Universities Press.

——. (1950). Clinical studies in psychoanalysis. New York: International Universities Press.

—— (ed.). (1951). The yearbook of psychoanalysis (Vol. 6). New York: International Universities Press.

——. (1963). Interview with Lawrence Kolb M.D. Sándor Lorand papers. Library of Congress: Washington, DC.

Lorand, Sándor, and Schneer, Henry (Eds.). (1961). Adolescent: Psychoanalytic approach to problems and therapy. New York: Harper & Brothers.