On Freud’s Trail

A City Tour on the Trail of Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis in Berlin

"Berlin is difficult but important soil," wrote Sigmund Freud to Karl Abraham on 24.8.1908. Sigmund Freud was "almost" a Berliner. He visited the city regularly - his most creative colleagues worked here in the 1920s. Psychoanalysis took root in Berlin with the founding of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and had its heydey here at the end of the 1920s. The Institute’s governing body, the German Psychoanalytic Society, was "aryanized" in 1933 and the fusion with other psychotherapeutic groups (Jung, Adler and others) followed in 1936. It was hoped that psychoanalysis would find its niche in the Nazi state within the framework of the newly founded "German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy," but this failed. The German Psychoanalytic Society was dissolved in 1938.

The psychoanalyst Regine Lockot tells this turbulent story on a bus tour to the places which played a part in it. The tour will also leave a trail: With the proceeds, a plaque for each tour will be uncovered, one commemorating Hanns Sachs, the other Sándor Radó. Both psychoanalysts made a considerable contribution to our understanding of psychoanalysis and both had to leave Berlin because they were Jewish.

When: 20 and 27 August 2006 from 11 am to 3 pm
Start: Jewish Museum Berlin
Admission: 25 euros
The ticket also covers admission to the special exhibition "PSYCHOanalysis. Sigmund Freud at 150"
Reservations: up to 10 days in advance
by fax on 030 25993-498
or j.grossmann@jmberlin.de.