Reunion in Stockbridge

From its foundation in 1910 up to 1938, the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) organized regular congresses for its members, offering not only opportunities for professional exchange but also for personal friendship and sociability. The first congress after the end of the war took place in Zurich in 1949, but only a small number of former WPV members were able to take part.

In 1950, however, in the context of the »First Stockbridge Congress on Child Analysis« called in honor of Anna Freud, the former colleagues reunited in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Two thirds of the 66 participants had been trained in the WPV.

Anna Freud, who was on the first of her 12 lecture tours to the USA at the time, was not required to present a lecture. Instead, she was asked to devote herself – far from official (representative) duties – completely to open discussions with her former colleagues from the WPV and the participants in her child psychology seminars and thus rediscover an atmosphere familiar from Vienna. »A part of the audience is familiar with the situation of an extensive discussion with Miss Freud. (…) For others, it is a new experience. We hope to be able to revive the spirit of former years for a few short hours here,« Ernst Kris said in his opening remarks.

Photos by Edward Bibring

Edward Bibring‘s photographs of colleagues, which were made in the context of psychoanalytical congresses between 1932 and 1938. Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Archives

Austen Riggs Foundation, Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Top row from left to right standing: Heinz Hartmann, René Spitz, Marianne Kris, Ernst Kris, Edith Jackson, N.N., Joseph Weinreb, N.N., N.N., Howard Edgerton, Max Schur, Edward Kronold, Robert Knight, Jan Frank, Walter Langer, Bertram Lewin, Edward Glover, Felix Deutsch, David Rapaport, Robert Waelder, Maurits Katan, Rudolph Loewenstein, Erik Erikson, Willi Hoffer, Merton Gill, Richard Sterba, Milton Senn

Middle row from left to right sitting: N.N., N.N., Berta Bornstein, Melitta Sperling, Dora Hartmann, Mary O’Neill Hawkins, Anna Maenchen, Jenny Waelder, Grete L. Bibring, Annie Reich, Christine Olden, Margaret S. Mahler, Phyllis Greenace, Emmy Sylvester, Annie Angel-Katan, Rosetta Hurwitz

Lowest row from left to right: Margaret Ribble, Lydia Dawes, Marian Putnam, Dorothy Burlingham, Elisabeth Geleerd, Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Beata Rank, Helene Deutsch, Anna Freud, N.N., Mc Cormick, N.N., N.N., Editha Sterba, Julia Deming, Salomea Isakower