Vienna Psychoanalytic Society
Otto Fenichel became a member of what organization or association in 1920?
Otto Fenichel Otto Fenichel ( 2 December 1897 in Vienna – 22 January 1946 in Los Angeles ) was a psychoanalyst of the so-called second generation . Education and psychoanalytic affiliations . Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna . Already as a very young man , when still in school , he was attracted by the circle of psychoanalysts around Freud . During the years 1915 and 1919 , he attended lectures by Freud , and as early as 1920 , aged 23 , he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society . In 1922 Fenichel moved to Berlin . During his Berlin time , until 1934 , he was a member of a group of Socialist and/or Marxist psychoanalysts ( with Siegfried Bernfeld , Erich Fromm , Wilhelm Reich , Ernst Simmel , Frances Deri and others ) . After his emigration – 1934 to Oslo , 1935 to Prague , 1938 to Los Angeles – he organized the contact between the worldwide scattered Marxist psychoanalysts by means of top secret Rundbriefe , i.e . circular letters . Those Rundbriefe , which became publicly known only in 1998 , can be counted among the most important documents pertaining to the problematic history of psychoanalysis between 1934 and 1945 , especially in regard to the problem of the expulsion of Wilhelm Reich from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1934 . In Los Angeles , Fenichel joined existing psychoanalytic circles and later helped found the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute . His training analysands in Los Angeles included Ralph Greenson . Writings . Fenichel was a prolific writer on psychoanalysis , and published some forty articles between Introjektion und Kastrationkomplex ( 1925 ) and Neurotic Acting Out ( 1945 ) . Among some of the areas he contributed to were female sexuality , the feeling of triumph , and the antecedents of the Oedipus complex . He also published an influential technical manual , Problems of Psychoanalytic Technique ( 1939 ) . Three interwar papers on female sexuality , attracted Freuds own attention : he wrote of the first that Fenichel ( 1930 ) rightly emphasizes the difficulty of recognizing in the material produced in analysis what parts of it represent the unchanged content of the pre-Oedipus phase and what parts have been distorted by regression . His 1936 article on the symbolic equation of Girl and Phallus subsequently became a launch pad for Jacques Lacan . In his 1939 article Trophy and Triumph , Fenichel pointed out that the feeling of triumph results from the removal of anxiety and inhibition by the winning of a trophy , but added that as the trophy is a super-ego derivative since it is a symbol of parental authority [ ... ] it threatens the ego in the same way that the super-ego threatens the ego Building on his own work , and the contributions of his peers and predecessors , Fenichel produced his encyclopedic textbook of 1945 : For countless students and professionals Fenichel is synonymous with his Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis ; and this text is regarded as synonymous with reliable and comprehensive psychoanalytic knowledge . Nevertheless , the work was not uncontroversial , challenging among others the findings of Melanie Klein , the neo-Freudians and much of the work of Franz Alexander , as well as displaying Fenichels continuing Marxist affiliation . Criticism . Harold Bloom called Fenichel the grim encyclopaedist of the Freudian psychodynamics ; but it was precisely the encyclopedic aspect of his work which aroused the criticism of Lacan . Comparing Fenichels work to an enumeration of the main sewer type , he argued for a distinction between a catalogue of past interpretations , and the actual job of finding the mutative interpretation within the actual session . He also criticised Fenichels use of organic stages of development in his writing ; while others saw Fenichel as oversimplifying his accounts of neurosis by categorical taxonomies . Although Fenichel himself had warned from the start of his book that he was only offering illustrative examples , not case histories , he may have unwittingly contributed to the vice of attempting to mastermind , not follow and learn from , the analytic process . Bibliography . - Otto Fenichel : Psychoanalysis as the Nucleus of a Future Dialectical-Materialistic Psychology ( 1934 ) . In : American Imago , Vol . 24 . ( 1967 ) , pp . 290–311 - Otto Fenichel : The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis . 3 vols , 1945 - Otto Fenichel : 119 Rundbriefe . Hg . Johannes Reichmayr und Elke Mühlleitner , 2 Bände , Frankfurt : Stroemfeld 1998 - Otto Fenichel et al . eds. , Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel ( 1987 ) . External links . - Otto Fenichel : 119 Rundbriefe ( German ) - Otto Fenichel : Über die Psychoanalyse als Keim einer zukünftigen dialektisch-materialistischen Psychologie ( German )