ABSTRACT
The detailed history of the Berlin and Vienna free clinics remained largely unknown until Elisabeth Danto's comprehensive work, Freud's Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis and Social Justice 1918-1938. This chapter outlines some of the specifics of how these clinics were founded, their detailed workings and the ideas of their leading figures; attention to the materiality of these inclusive projects is important in understanding what is at stake in the interface of psychoanalysis with various social realities. It identifies the theoretical and practical issues in these early transpositions of psychoanalysis into working-class contexts. The Berlin Polyclinic was established in 1920, and the Vienna Ambulatorium opened in 1922. Both offered free and low-cost psychoanalysis. Many young prospective analysts, radicalised by the political context, were keen to learn and apply psychoanalysis to progressive social causes. Among these were Reich and Fenichel who attended the weekly meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
