ABSTRACT
The history of psychoanalysis in Germany is not a story of continuous growth and stable development: rather, the founding phase and the subsequent flourishing period in the 1920s is followed by ruptures, discontinuities, persecution, professional conformity, and self-dissolution, during the Nazi period. The history of psychoanalysis in Germany was at several turning points extremely closely tied to the politics of the International Psychoanalytical Association, more so than to any of its constituent organizations—a close relationship. Scientifically, up to the end of the First World War, psychoanalysis remained mostly Karl Abraham's domain. His research on psychosis, in particular, explored the uncharted territory of pre-oedipal psycho-dynamics, but he was unable to conquer "the promised land of psychiatry" for Anna Freud. In 1930 the founding of the Psychoanalytical Institute of Frankfurt at the university as a guest of the Institute for Social Research indicated another direction: the promotion of the application of psychoanalysis in the humanities.
