Lunchtime Talk with Dr Lene Auestad, author and philosopher, University of Oslo: stories, psychoanalysis and politics

On October 24th 1935 the Berlin analyst Edith Jacobson was arrested by the Gestapo. She was part of the socialist group New Beginning.

The Norwegian analyst Nic Waal, who had trained in Berlin, was chosen by Ernest Jones to report on the incident. I shall analyse her letters to Jones and parts of the relevant correspondence between Anna Freud and the latter.

The problem raised by this case about the political content or implications of psychoanalysis, the meaning of “neutrality” and of confidentiality go beyond the context of the Nazi regime.

The lasting relevance of the Edith Jacobson case lies in the questions it poses about the political engagement of psychoanalysis and the relation between the state and the analytic space.