PSYCHOANALYTISCHE BEWEGUNG, DIE

In 1929 Adolf J. Storfer founded the review Die Psychoanalytische Bewegung (The psychoanalytic movement) as one of the publications of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag. As its title suggests, this bimonthly periodical was intended to open the frontiers of the institutionally contained psychoanalytic world to a broader non-specialist public. As a link between the science of psychoanalysis and a public with an interest in the literature, this periodical saw itself as a forum for somewhat unorthodox propositions and ideas.

This orientation was already clear in Thomas Mann's contribution to the first issue, "Die Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte" (The place of Freud in the history of modern thought). Mann described Freud as a writer and scientist with a worldwide reputation whose scope and range far exceeded the universe of specialist psychologists and who was well on the way to revolutionizing all sciences of the mind. In addition to contributions from applied psychoanalysis, the review also brought together reviews of contemporary literature in the domain, as well as short literary or scientific works dating from an earlier period and considered to be precursors of psychoanalysis. In this category of genealogical precursors it published extracts from poets, such as Boccaccio, or thinkers and philosophers like Plato, Kierkegaard, Montesquieu, and Montaigne. It also presented critical points of view from contemporary writers like André Maurois, Italo Svevo, Arnold Zweig, and Stefan Zweig. The section entitled "Das Echo der Psychoanalyse" provided information on events in the world of psychoanalysis and reviewed recent political and scientific critiques of psychoanalysis in various sectors

After Storfer resigned from the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Eduard Hitschmann took over the publication in August 1932. The number of subscribers to the periodical dropped after the National Socialist party came to power in Germany, when many German analysts and intellectuals close to analytic circles fled the country. The economic and political situation caused the publication of Die Psychoanalytische Bewegung to be suspended in December 1933.

Lydia Marinelli

See also: Goethe Prize; Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag.