ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis seemed to be a relatively accessible path for women in the early twentieth century. The proportion of women in the profession at the time was, on an international level, higher than in any other field of science (Appignanesi 2000; Thompson 1987; Zaretsky 2005). In the 1930s in Europe, 30 percent of psychoanalysts were women while they composed only 5 percent of medical practitioners (Freidenreich 2002; Borgos 2017 and 2018). In Vienna between the 1910 and 1937, women’s participation had increased from 2 percent to 45 percent (Mühlleitner 2000). This tendency is reflected in the membership of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association as well; fifteen percent of its members were female in the 1920s, rising to more than 30 percent in the 1930s, and reaching nearly 48 percent by 1937 (see Giefer 2007).1 Although psychoanalytic institutions were mainly led by men, from the 1920s on, more and more women filled leading positions in the movement as training analysts, editors, and professors. Many of these women achieved status in the profession or enhanced their academic reputations in the 1930s, as a result of their emigration to Britain or the United States (Roith 1988; Roudinesco 2000).
