ABSTRACT

The psychoanalytic institution was in its infancy when Anna Freud had to deal with the “pathology of associations”, of which Ferenczi had warned analysts the moment they were about to organize themselves into the Internationale Psycho-analytische Vereinigung (IPV). During the Weimar congress of the Internationale IPV, a woman told Freud of her desire to learn psychoanalysis. During the winter semesters she followed Freud’s lectures and Tausk’s courses, which she found too servile in his Freudianism, and she took part in the Wednesday discussions of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Lou Andreas-Salome was very happy, in 1917, that the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis gave a shape to the very personal construction of Freud, so that it is meaning and value could be appreciated by outsiders, “lay” people like herself. The growth in the number of analysts made possible by “some kind of organisation” would allow for the treatment of “a considerable mass of the population”.