ABSTRACT
The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (WPV) has three histories: first, underwent an incredible development from its founding in 1908 to 1938; second, it had to endure its own brutal destruction; and third, beginning in 1946, it experienced a difficult and slow but steady rehabilitation. The founding of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society by Sigmund Freud and his disciples in 1908 was only the formal beginning of the WPV. Freud was sharply criticized by countless colleagues, many of whom—even former friends—avoided his company. In 1933, the National Socialists came to power in Germany, and many German psychoanalysts immigrated to Austria. Thomas Mann came to Vienna to deliver a laudatory speech entitled "Freud and the Future", and psychoanalysts from various countries also arrived, including Ludwig Binswanger from Switzerland, who presented an address on "Freud's Conception of Man in the Light of Anthropology"—but no one came from Germany.
