ABSTRACT
1856
Sigmund Freud was born in Freiberg.
1861The study of aphasias began after Broca’s discovery of the disturbing effects caused by injury to the frontal lobe of the brain.
1867Equal rights for Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire granted by Emperor Franz Joseph.
1873Black Wednesday.
1876Brücke published the Conferences on Physiology.
1877Abraham was born in Bremen on 3 May.
1883Theodor Aschenbrandt found that administering cocaine to soldiers enhanced their endurance on manoeuvres.
Freud discovered the gold method.
1887First meeting between Wilhelm Fliess and Sigmund Freud in Vienna.
1894A year of abstinence for Freud after discovering cardiac problems.
1895December: Freud, Manuscript K.
1896Abraham began his degree in medicine, which he studied mainly in Wurtzburg and Freiberg.
1897The World Zionist Organisation was created.
1898Pierre Janet: Neurosis and Fixed Ideas.
2841899Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (4 November).
1900Rupture of Freud’s friendship with Wilhelm Fliess.
1901Abraham published his doctoral thesis: “The Developmental History of the Budgerigar-Melopsittacus undulatus”.
17 May: Abraham started working as a volunteer; shortly afterwards he was appointed as assistant to Professor Liepmann in the municipal mental hospital in Dalldorf.
Freud: On Dreams.
Freud: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
1902Abraham met his future wife on a German philology course. Creation of the Wednesday Psychological Society.
Jung: On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.
1904Abraham was named second assistant to Jung at the Burghölzli clinic (he began on 8 December). He resigned three years later. Abraham got engage to Hedwig.
1905Abraham was appointed as First Assistant at the Burghölzli. Summer with Hedwig’s family in Switzerland. Abraham crossed the Daelli point for the first time where the “Corraggio Casimiro”, expression in his exchanges with Freud, was born.
Freud: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (Dora case study); Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; The Joke and its Relation to Unconsciousness.
Meeting between Freud and Otto Rank.
190623 June: Abraham got married in Switzerland. The couple took up residence in an apartment close to the Burghölzli.
The Wednesday Psychoanalytic Society hired a paid secretary: Otto Rank.
190727 February: Jung visited Freud.
15 April: Freud officially established the Wednesday Society as the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society and Rank was appointed as secretary.
June: On the Significance of Sexual Trauma in Childhood for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox (Zentralblatt).
The Experiencing of Sexual Traumas as a Form of Sexual Activity, presented by Abraham at one of the first meetings of the Freudian Association at the end of the summer.
September: Meeting between Freud and Jones in Amsterdam.
285October: Freudian Association created in Berlin. The second meeting was attended by “no less than twenty doctors”. For the third meeting Abraham prepared a report on infantile sexual trauma.
November: Abraham resigned from his position at the Burghölzli.
15 November: First meeting between Abraham and Freud (In Grosskurth, 1991, p. 215), the meeting is recorded as taking place on 15 December).
18 November: Abraham’s daughter Hilda was born.
25 November: Jones visited Jung in Zurich.
December: Abraham was invited for the first time to a meeting of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society.
21 December: Abraham left Zurich and moved to Berlin, becoming the first German doctor to have a private psychoanalytic practice.
Freud and Abraham began their correspondence.
Max Eitingon joined the team at the Burghölzli.
The Freudian association in Zurich was created.
Freud: Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s Gradiva.
1908The Viennese Psychoanalytic Society had twenty-two members, although no more than ten were usually present in the meetings.
4 April: Abraham finished Dreams and Myths. He designed a course for doctors.
24 and 25 April: Congress of Psychiatrists in Berlin.
27 April: First International Psychoanalytical Congress in Salzburg (Error in Le Rider who placed it in Berlin.) (Jaccard, 1982 , p. 125.)
First meeting of the International Psychoanalytical Association (with forty-two members from six countries). The dispute with Jung erupted.
10 June: Albert Moll, a specialist in nervous disorders and a criminologist based in Berlin, invited Abraham to collaborate in a new journal. Abraham accepted.
July: The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox. (Zentralblatt). Prior reading in Salzburg on 28 April.
28627 August: Abraham founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society (with Iwan Bloch, Magnus Hirschfeld, Otto Juliusburger, and Heinrich Koerber).
9 November: Abraham addressed the Berlin Society for Psychiatry and Nervous Illnesses regarding neurosis and intermarriage between close relatives.
Abraham psychoanalysed his first patient.
The Psychological Relations between Sexuality and Alcoholism. (Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft).
The Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forsc-hungen was launched with Jung as editor.
1909February: a Russian journal invited Abraham to send a short article on psychoanalysis. He accepted.
Freud, Jung, and Ferenczi travelled to the United States.
Freud: Remarks on a Case of Obsessional Neurosis; On Psychoanalysis. 1 April: The Jahrbuch was issued which included: The Significance of Intermarriage between Close Relatives in the Psychology of the Neuroses (lecture in 1908 to the Berlin Association). It also contained Freud’s Analysis of the Phobia of a Five-Year-Old Boy. September: Max Eitingon followed Abraham’s footsteps and moved to Berlin (he would become one of Abraham’s most loyal and efficient collaborators).
Early October: Freud visited Abraham in Berlin.
8 November: battle in the Neurologische Gesellschaft, in which Abraham published Hysterical Dream States.
191028 February: Abraham began to teach a course on the theory of neuroses (including sexual theory and dream analysis). The course was held on two afternoons a week for an hour and a half. Fee: 30 Marks.
30 and 31 March: Second International Psychoanalytical Congress in Nüremberg. The International Psychoanalytical Association was founded with Jung as president.
The monthly journal, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, was created in Nüremberg and directed by Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel.
March: Remarks on the Psycho-analysis of a Case of Foot and Corset Fetishism (Jahrbuch).
31 March: Abraham founded the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute of which he was president until his death.
28725 August: Abraham’s second child, Grant Allan, was born in Berlin.
12 October: Adler was elected as president and Stekel as vicepresident of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society.
18 October: The Abraham family moved to a larger home at 24 Rankestrasse.
Abraham contracted dysentery which weakened him for the rest of his life.
December: Freud completed the Schreber Case.
Hysterical Dream States.
Freud: Leonardo da Vinci: A Memory of his Childhood.
1911The Berlin Society received a visit from Lou Andreas-Salomé. February: Meeting between Fliess and Abraham.
3 March: Freud informed Abraham that he had taken over the direction of the Vienna Group from Adler and Stekel in February.
9 March: Abraham confessed to Freud that he felt ambivalence towards the eight hours of analysis that he was carrying out each day which left him little time “for science”.
April: Short holiday in Schandau (near Dresden) where he met with the Berlin group and people from the region.
9 May: First meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Society in Baltimore.
June: Adler resigned from the Viennese Society together with another nine members.
July: Adler resigned from his position at the Zentralblatt.
Summer: Abraham spent the long and hot summer in Skagen (Denmark); the two children had chickenpox.
Late August: Abraham took his daughter to Bremen to see her grandparents.
21–22 September: Third International Psychoanalytical Congress in Weimar. Meeting between Lou Andreas-Salome and Freud.
September: Observations of the Cult of the Mother and its Symbolism in Individual and Folk Psychology (Zentralblatt).
October: Hirschfeld resigned from the Berlin group.
December: Imago was founded with Rank and Sachs as editors.
On the Determining Power of Names (Zentralblatt).
Analysis of a Dream by Ovidio (Zentralblatt).
288Giovanni Segantini: A Psycho-Analytical Study (Schriften zur Angewandten Seelenkunde).
Freud: Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Autobiographical Account of Paranoia (Schreber).
1912March: Notes on the Psychoanalytic Investigation and Treatment of Manic-Depressive Insanity and Allied Conditions. (Zeitschrift).
June: Jones proposed the creation of a secret committee. It was formed in the same year with Ferenczi, Sachs, Abraham, Rank, and Jones.
July: Amenhotep IV. Psycho-analytical Contributions Towards the Understanding of his Personality and of the Monotheistic Cult of Aton. (Imago).
Summer: In the Hotel Stooss (Switzerland), beside Lake Lucerne.
9 August: Abraham was optimistic about Zurich in a letter to Freud, after a long bronchial ailment.
1 October: Hedwig’s father died from a stroke.
24 October: Conference in Munich, where Abraham met Freud.
3 November: Freud informed Abraham that he was no longer the director of the Zentralblatt.
24 November: Jung organised a meeting with Freud in Munich in order to transfer the directorship of the Zentrallblatt to Stekel.
November: The Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse was founded with Ferenczi, Rank, and Jones as editors.
A Complicated Ceremonial Found in Some Neurotic Women. (Zentralblatt).
Freud: A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis. (Metapsych.)
1913March: Should Patients Write Down Their Dreams? (Int. Zeitschrift).
May: A Screen Memory Concerning a Childhood Event of Apparently Aetiological Significance. (Int. Zeitschrift).
May: On the Psychogenesis of Agoraphobia in Childhood. (Int. Zeitschrift).
5 May: Abraham prepared his doctoral thesis.
19 May: Ferenczi founded the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society.
28925 May: Freud gave rings to the members of the Vienna Committee.
May: Some Remarks on the Role of Grandparents in the Psychology of Neuroses. (Int. Zeitschrift).
Freud: Totem and Taboo (read twice with enthusiasm by Abraham in June).
July: Mental After-Effects Produced in a Nine-Year-Old Child by the Observation of Sexual Intercourse between its Parents. (Int. Zeitschrift).
July: Abraham spent a few days in the Dutch seaside holiday resort Noordwijk aan Zee, where Freud had also been on several occasions.
6 August: Abraham visited the archaeological museum of Leyde.
September: Restrictions and Transformations of Scopophilia in Psycho-Neurotics; with Remarks on Analogous Phenomena in Folk Psychology (Jahrbuch).
7 and 8 September: Fourth International Psychoanalytical Congress in Munich. Abraham presented: “Restrictions and Transformations of Scopophilia in Psycho-Neurotics …”
October: Abraham visited his parents (in Bremen) on a Sunday.
30 October: Jones founded the London Psychoanalytic Society.
November: On Neurotic Exogamy: A Contribution to the Similarities in the Psychic Life of Neurotics and of Primitive Man (Imago).
4 November: Abraham accepted the directorship of the Jahrbuch after the resignation of Jung, but he believed that the dissolution of the International Association proposed by Freud was very delicate, as it was not provided in the statutes.
25 December: Abraham met Freud in Berlin.
1914January: Review of C. G. Jung’s Vmch einer Darstellung der Psycho-analytischcn Tiieorie (Attempt at a Representation of Psychoanalytical Theory) (Int. Zeitschrift).
March: The Ear and Auditory Passage as Erotogenic Zones (Int. Zeitschrift).
A Constitutional Basis of Locomotor Anxiety (Int. Zeitschrift).
20 April: Jung resigned from his functions as president of the International Psychoanalytical Association and as editor of the Jahrbuch. Karl Abraham temporarily replaced him.
290May: Meeting of the Berlin group to debate the oedipal phenomena in childhood.
Freud suggested to Abraham the creation of a Korrespondenzblatt (news bulletin for the affiliates of the International Psychoanalytical Association) that could be included in the fourth number of the Zeitschrift; it was published in June.
10 May: Abraham accepted the presidency of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
June: A Contribution Towards the Understanding of the Suggestive Effect of Medicine in the Neuroses (Int. Zeitschrift).
28 June: Assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo. Great War. Abraham was enlisted in the twentieth East Prussian army corps. He was a reserve and worked as a surgeon in Berlin and Allenstein.
3 July: Conference at the Gesellschaft für Sexual Wissenschaft: Eigentümliche Formen der Gattenwahl, besondere Inzucht und Exogamie.
6 July: Abraham travelled to the Baltic Sea with his wife and children (he followed them later after working for a few more days). They stayed in Brunshaupten (Hotel Dünenhaus) until 2 August.
1 August: Abraham was mobilised to the health service in the military hospital at the Grunewald hippodrome on the outskirts of Berlin.
3 August: Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium. The International Psychoanalytical Congress in Dresden had been planned to take place on the eve of the outbreak of the war. It was never held.
4 August: Great Britain declared war on Germany.
29 August: (in a letter from Abraham to Freud) The German troops were barely 100 kilometres from Paris. Belgium was finished, as was England, on land. The same was happening with Russia. … Few signs of war here in Berlin, (13 September).
October: Ferenczi was enlisted as a doctor for the Hungarian Hussars.
The publication of the Jahrbuch was suspended.
Freud: History of the Psychoanalytic Movement and Introduction to Narcissism.
291191513 March: Abraham was transferred as a doctor of the German army to Allenstein military hospital in East Prussia.
Freud: Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (Metapsych.), Repression (Metapsych), The Unconscious (Metapsych.) and Thoughts for the Times on War and Death. Observations on Transference Love.
September: Freud visited Ferenczi in the Papa barracks in Hungary.
13 November: Abraham, liberated from his surgical obligations, set up an observation centre for psychopathic soldiers. Later he was assigned psychiatric beds and organised a psychiatric hospital unit.
1916The family moved to Allenstein.
The First Pregenital Stage of the Libido (Int. Zeitschrift).
Freud: (and 1917) Introduction to Psychoanalysis.
Abraham specialised as an expert witness in military trials, testifying with respect to the mental state of convicted soldiers.
1917Some Illustrations on the Emotional Relationship of Little Girls Towards Their Parents (Int. Zeitschrift).
Ejaculatio Praecox (Int. Zeitschrift).
The Spending of Money in Anxiety States (Int. Zeitschrift).
30 July to 31 August: The Freud family spent their holidays in Csorbato (Hungary).
Freud: Mourning and Melancholia (Metapsych.) and Metapsychological Addiction to the Dream’s Theory (Metapsych.).
December: The troops of English general, Allenby entered the Palestine capital. Although Chemouni comment “the Joyfulness that (Freud) shares to Abraham”, refers to this fact, there is no direct allusion to it in the correspondence at that time.
1918Psycho-analysis and the War Neuroses. (Int. Psychoanalytische).
Anton von Freund created a fund to sustain psychoanalysis.
Freud: From the History of an Infantile Neurosis (the Wolf Man).
28 and 29 September: Fifth International Psychoanalytical Congress in Budapest.
October: Freud arranged a meeting between Abraham and Ernst Simmel. Abraham began analysing Simmel in early 1919.
late October: Symposium on neurosis in Berlin organised by Karl Abraham.
2929 November: The Emperor was forced to abdicate; the armistice was signed on 11th. The social-democrat leader Friedrich Ebert came to power.
Abraham returned to Berlin.
Tony von Freund created a foundation to support psychoanalysis called the Internationaler psychoanalytischer Verlag.
1919Some Remarks on Ferenczi’s Paper on Sunday Neuroses (Int. Zeitschrift).
15 January: Assassination of Rose of Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht.
Mid-January: The International Psychoanalytischer Verlag was founded in Vienna.
19 January: German women voted for the first time.
February: A Particular Form of Neurotic Resistance against the Psycho-Analytic Method (Int. Zeitschrift).
20 February: Jones re-created the English group as the British Psychoanalytic Society.
May: Ferenczi was expelled from Budapest’s medical society during the “White Terror”.
June: The peace conditions of Versailles were accepted.
3 July: Suicide of Víctor Tausk.
August: Meeting in Berlin between Freud, Abraham, and Eitingon.
11 August: The Weimar Republic was officially constituted.
Jones founded the International Psycho-Analytical Press and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
1920The Day of Atonement: Some Observations on Reik’s Problems of the Psychology of Religion (Imago).
Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
20 January: Anton von Freund died.
23 January: Sophie Freud Halberstadt died.
14 February: Opening of the Berlin Polyclinic.
March: The Narcissistic Evaluation of Excretory Processes in Dreams and Neurosis (Int. Zeitschrift).
13 March: Failed attempt at a coup d’état, quashed by the people.
June: the Applicability of Psychoanalytic Treatment to Patients at an Advanced Age (Int. Zeitschrift).
293Late summer: Hanns Sachs left Switzerland and moved to Berlin. 8–12 September: Sixth International Psychoanalytical Congress in The Hague. Under the presidency of Ferenczi; Jones was chosen as the future president. The last Congress that Freud attended.
20 September: The first weekly bulletin, Rundbriefe was issued. October: The Cultural Significance of Psychoanalysis (Die neue Rundschau).
September: Manifestations of the Female Castration Complex (Int. Zeitschrift). Presented at the Congress in The Hague.
1 October: a new law was passed to create a new urban community imposed by the two winning parties (socialists, independent, and social-democrats) in the elections that finally recognised universal suffrage.
Abraham analysed E. Glover.
1921January: Contributions to the Theory of the Anal Character (Int. Zeitschrift).
March: Freud published Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
June: Two Mistakes of a Hebephrenic Patient (Int. Zeitschrift).
June: K. Abraham contributed to Ferenczi’s paper Psycho-analytische Betrachtungen über den Tic, Discussion on Tic (Int. Zeitschrift).
A peace treaty was signed between Germany and the United States.
December: Abraham spent a few days with Freud in Vienna together with Jones, Ferenczi, and Rank.
1922Mistakes with an Overcompensating Tendency (Int. Zeitschrift).
The Spider as a Dream Symbol (Int. Zeitschrift).
The Rescue and Murder of the Father in Neurotic Phantasy- Formations (Int. Zeitschrift).
German-Soviet Treaty of Rapallo.
Abraham was appointed as secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He held this position until 24 September when he was promoted to president.
24 June: The minister of foreign affairs and director of the AEG, Walther Rathenau, was assassinated by a secret right-wing organisation.
29425–27 September: Seventh International Psychoanalytical Congress in Berlin, very close to the Clinic. Jean Piaget attended and Sabina Spielrein led the Russian delegation.
October: An Octogenarian’s Mistake (Int. Zeitschrift).
1923Psycho-analytical Views on Some Characteristics of Early Infantile Thinking (British Journal of Medical Psychology).
Two Contributions to the Study of Symbols (Imago).
An Infantile Theory of the Origin of the Female Sex (Int. Zeitschrift).
January: Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr district. The German government decided to adopt a stance of passive resistance, which was ended on 26 September by Stresemann’s new government.
February: Klein was admitted as a full member of the Berlin Society.
April: Freud published The Ego and the Id.
Freud was diagnosed with cancer.
26–28 August: The Committee met in San Cristoforo (Dolomite Mountains), at the foot of the Lavarone, where Freud resided.
29 October: The radio became public in Berlin.
Attempted coup d’état by Hitler and Ludendorff in Munich.
1924A Short Study of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders (Neue Arbeiten zur ärztlichen Psychoanalyse).
In a letter ten days before the Salzburg Congress, Freud, Rank, and Ferenczi announced the dissolution of the Committee.
The publication of the Gesammelte Schriften began.
Jones came to an agreement with Hogarth Press to publish psychoanalytic works in English.
21–23 April: Eighth International Psychoanalytical Congress in Salzburg. Ferenczi nominated Abraham as president which was unanimously approved.
Abraham was the President of the International Association until his death.
27 April: Rank left for America.
October: First Conference of German Psychoanalysts, in Würtzburg.
Hitler’s trial in Munich.
2951925Character-formation on the Genital Level of the Libido (Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek).
An Infantile Sexual Theory not Hitherto Noted (Int. Zeitschrift). Psychoanalysis and Gynaecology (Zeitschrift für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie).
Concurrent Phantasies in Mother and Son (Int. Zeitschrift).
The History of an Impostor in the Light of Psychoanalytical Knowledge (Imago, in the number that was issued on the day of Abraham’s death).
Freud: Autobiography and My Life and Psychoanalysis.
February: Friedrich Ebert, social-democrat and first president of first German Republic died. He was succeeded by General Hindenburg.
May: During a trip Abraham choked on a foreign body. The complications that followed were: a constant fever, double pneumonia, the need for a gall bladder operation and discomfort due to persistent hiccups which later gave rise to chronic bronchitis.
9 May: Abraham made his last appearance at a Society meeting.
June: Joseph Breuer died at the age of 83.
7 June: Abraham wrote to Freud from his bed. In July he felt better and spent the summer in Switzerland with his family.
3–5 September: Ninth International Psychoanalytical Congress in Bad Homburg (Germany). Abraham’s attendance was an excessive strain on his weak constitution.
17 October: Despite his optimism, the fevers, the pain, and gall bladder problems indicated the seriousness of Abraham’s illness.
16 December: Félix Deutsch visited Abraham.
25 December: Abraham died at the age of forty-eight.
Commemorative meeting of the Vienna Society was held in honour of Abraham. Freud had decided to stop attending the meetings. This was the first and last exception.
1926Psycho-analytical Notes on Cout’s System of Self- Mastery (Int. Zeitschrift, in the commemorative issue paying tribute to Abraham, posthumous paper).
Eitingon replaced Abraham as President of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
296February: Freud published Inhibition, Symptoms and Anxiety.
7 May: Last meeting of the Committee with Freud in Vienna.
Anna Freud took the place of Rank in the Committee.
September: Klein left Berlin and moved to London.
1938Hilda Abraham arrived in London from Berlin in the same year as the Freuds. Although she was the daughter of Melanie Klein’s mentor, she always fervently opposed her ideas.
1945Psychoanalysis began to be taught in German universities.
