ABSTRACT

Chicago has an unusual history within the tale of Freud’s reception in America. Some of Carl Jung’s most influential patrons were from Chicago, but little is yet known about the sorts of Americans who went to Zurich, although the literature about Freud and America would seem to be abundant. Yet there are some striking gaps in what we know about Freud’s impact on the States. And Chicago is one of the main blank spots. The Institute of Psychoanalysis there was founded by Franz Alexander in the early 1930s; he had come from being a star in Berlin, and with an academic family background he sought to make a university-like atmosphere for analysts in Chicago. Until he left for Los Angeles in 1956, Alexander was the life and soul of the Chicago Institute. He became centrally interested in psychosomatic medicine, but his range was enormous; he wrote about the history of psychiatry and proposed changes in therapeutic technique. Alexander (already famous) became notorious as an enemy to orthodox analysis by proposing the advantages of a “corrective emotional experience” in treatment.