Fritz Read online

  Beyond Laura’s physical attractiveness, Fritz was undoubtedly drawn to her intellectuality, her degree of acculturation, and her academic involvement. She represented the refined lady, the counterpart to his bohemian tramp.

  For Laura, Fritz was most probably a powerful father figure. Twelve years her senior and more experienced, he had certain conventional trappings that were not to be denied, being a decorated war veteran and a doctor as well. Over and above that, she must have found his bohemian Bauhaus lifestyle appealing, as it stood in sharp contrast to the upper-middle-class preoccupations of her family. One can see Laura’s attraction to Fritz as a way of differentiating herself from her family and their values—as an act of “mature youth in rebellion.” Thus, the two of them saw and admired in one another desires and attitudes that they couldn’t openly and fully live out in their own lives.

  Laura soon saw Fritz as a man whose cynicism hid a basic insecurity, who never received proper affirmation in the course of growing up, and, though he was too proud to ask, who sorely needed love and respect. She had faith that her compassion, wisdom, and love might cure what ailed him. Not long after their meeting, they became lovers.

  Fritz remained in Frankfurt for a year. At the exact moment his money ran out, Clara Happel, his second analyst, abruptly informed him that his analysis was finished and that, being free of complexes, he could now go on to do control work—to train as a practicing psychoanalyst under supervision. Fritz was surprised. He felt, if anything, more at loose ends now than before. Much of his previous accomplishments had come about by virtue of his forcing himself to do those things he was conditioned to feel were important: to study, to earn his degree, to secure decent appointments. Part of his analysis with Happel had concentrated on finding his own values, not those that his parents or society subtly trained him to want. He was questioning, in his therapy, what he later termed “shouldisms,” or his “Topdog.” The day this “should” system temporarily collapsed, his guideposts disappeared. Lost, confused, uncertain, he spent that night wandering aimlessly through the streets of Frankfurt until dawn.

  Feeling no inner push urging him to take a contradictory stand, he followed Happel’s suggestion and went on to Vienna, the center of psychoanalytic learning. No longer in psychoanalytic treatment himself, he began to receive supervision of his own cases from Helene Deutsch and Edward Hitschmann, two therapists with excellent reputations as teachers. But again, the search for salvation led him into a blind alley. On a personal level, he missed the sexual release and physical affection his relationship with Laura had afforded, for the prudery of the Viennese maidens prevented him from having a single casual affair in the year he spent there. Nor did he find psychoanalytic illumination. Helene Deutsch impressed him most with her analytic coldness. Once, upon giving her a gift, he received an interpretation of his motivations instead of a “thank you” from her.

  What he did get out of his training work was not intentional. It was an appreciation of easiness, warmth, and common sense. He especially recalled the time Paul Federn, a dignified, fatherly psychoanalyst, during one of his lectures, commented, “Man kann gar nicht genug vöeglin” (“You just can’t fuck enough”). Or Hitschmann’s droll comment, when Fritz asked him about the neo-Freudian schools, that “They all make money.”

  There was another incident with Hitschmann, which, in retrospect, pointed the way to Fritz’s Gestalt Therapy formulations. Hitschmann, an affable, easy-going man, allowed for more casual give-and-take in supervisory hours than the icy Helene Deutsch. Fritz began to share his doubts about his own capacities as a man and about the adequacy of his penis. Finally, Hitschmann said, “Well, take out your penis. Let’s have a look at the thing.” This he did. They talked about its size and decided it was certainly adequate. This put to rest Fritz’s fantasies about it. This ability to deal with the present, to explore the actuality and not the fantasy, was to lead, eventually, to Fritz’s work in the Here and Now.

  In 1928, after spending a depressing year in Vienna, he completed his supervisory work, left a clinical assistantship at the mental hospital under the direction of Paul Schilder, another of the early psychoanalysts, and returned to Berlin where he established his own analytic practice. Laura was still about, waiting patiently in the wings. And so was the analyst’s couch, since Fritz knew that he was still unsettled. His delving into the past to find peace of mind had not brought contentment. Perhaps he had not analyzed its effects fully, had not worked through his Oedipal conflict—his hatred for his father and his possessiveness about his mother? His feeling that he had not done those things caused him to seek his third analyst. It was a catastrophic experience with a man named Eugen J. Harnik.

  “I wish that I could, in some way, describe the state of stupidity and moral cowardice to which his so-called treatment reduced me,” Fritz wrote. Harnik, who reportedly later died in an asylum, believed in passive analysis. For one hour a day, five days a week, for a year and a half, Fritz trooped to the couch, lay down, and talked. He was greeted neither by “Hello” nor “Good-bye.” A few minutes before the end of each hour, Harnik shuffled one foot upon the floor, indicating that Fritz should shortly leave. He offered, perhaps, one sentence a week as feedback. Fritz, getting no cues as to what path to follow, filled the air with words. Once, getting a rare comment that Fritz seemed to be a ladies’ man, Fritz proceeded to labor on, week after week, with tales of amatory activities that he undertook, in large measure, to do the right thing by his therapist. He lacked the confidence to break off treatment. Could he, after all, rightfully become an analyst if his analysis with both Happel and Harnik were unsuccessful?

  Laura, by then, was pressing for marriage. They had been keeping company for four years. Fritz was now thirty-seven years old. When he mentioned the possibility to Harnik, his response was, “You are not allowed to make an important decision during your analysis. If you marry, I’ll break off your analysis.”

  “Being too cowardly to discontinue my couch life on my own responsibility,” he wrote, “I put the responsibility on him and exchanged psychoanalysis for marriage.”

  And why not? He liked Laura, although not madly in love with her. They had their common interests. Perhaps he would find greater purpose through becoming a husband and a father. Besides which, his sense of morality told him that it was the right thing to do. He had, after all, deflowered her four years ago. (“She deceived me,” he later told a colleague, “pretending to be experienced when she was a virgin.”) There seemed nothing better to do, given the circumstances.

  The wedding took place on August 23, 1929, over the objections of the Posner family, who thought that Laura was marrying beneath herself.

  Whatever ill effects Fritz suffered in his various psychoanalysis, in an affirmative sense he experienced first-hand Freud’s insights into hidden motivations—into forces directing a person to act in a particular way that were out of that person’s awareness. He also came to recognize the importance of sex and aggression as two of these motivating forces. His analysts taught him, as well, that dreams were “the Royal Road to the Unconscious,” the importance of careful listening, and the awareness of how earlier life experiences affect current behavior. Fritz’s first six years of analytic practice in Frankfurt, Vienna, and finally Berlin—from 1926 through 1932—were passed as a bona fide, trained, certified Freudian psychoanalyst. He was more open-minded than most, perhaps, but almost as orthodox in practice.

  Still not ready to give up on his own psychoanalysis, Fritz turned again to Karen Horney for advice, as the two of them had a mutual respect for one another.

  “See Wilhelm Reich,” she suggested. “He’s the only one who might get through to you.”

  A brilliant, outspoken, radical psychoanalyst, Reich was causing much ferment among his fellow Freudians by questioning the importance of working with childhood memories. With him, Fritz’s search began to bear its first fruits, as he left the confusion of retro
spective ruminations. Reich’s focus on “body armor” (posture, gesture, muscular tension) not only lessened the importance of historical data, but Reich himself offered Fritz involvement.

  After Freud, the major influence on Fritz’s developing psychological style had to be Wilhelm Reich. Fritz was impressed with Reich’s vitality, his sense of aliveness, his rebelliousness, and his willingness to enter into a discussion of any situation, particularly sexual and political ones. Reich, through his book, Character Analysis, was also the first analyst to state that more can be achieved therapeutically by being aware of the patient’s present attitude than can be accomplished by verbal searchings for historical facts. Reich’s awareness of bodily attitudes reinforced Fritz’s earlier appreciation of the importance of posture and movement, which he had learned in a different setting from Max Reinhardt and Palucca. Further, Reich’s techniques allowed for direct body contact, where the therapist would lay hands on tensed muscles, muscles that withheld hatred or hurt, terror or tears. This would eventually help free Fritz from the analytic taboo against touching patients.

  Fritz soon felt energized and stimulated rather than preoccupied and withdrawn. He became a proud father when Renate, his daughter, was born on July 23, 1931. Becoming involved in the anti-Fascist movement, he taught at the Workers College and tried, along with others, to bring about a conciliation between communists and socialists to stop Hitler.

  The burning of the Reichstag signified the failure of the anti-Nazi opposition. Political opponents were being rounded up in Berlin. Fritz, Laura, and Ren had to sleep separately, in the homes of different friends, to avoid arrest. Reich, an avowed Marxist, fled to Norway. In April 1933, Fritz crossed the border into Holland with 100 marks, the equivalent of $25, smuggled out in his cigarette lighter. Laura and Ren left for the safer south of Germany and stayed with her family.

  His analysis with Reich was severed. His flourishing practice gone. The most handsome apartment imaginable—filled with furniture carved from rare woods and ultramodern accessories all fashioned by Bauhaus masters—a wedding gift from the Posner family that was photographed in Germany’s leading architectural magazine, stood empty.

  The situation in Holland was equally grim. Fritz was put up, initially, in a home packed with Jewish refugees. Living on charity, he did the best he could, continuing his analytic training with Karl Landauer, another refugee analyst who formerly, along with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, headed the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute. Fritz palled around with a ham actor who had the unusual ability to fart melodies and had an affair with a somewhat hysterical married woman. Six months later, he sent for Laura and Ren, and together they managed to find an unheated attic apartment to live in.

  Conditions became progressively worse. Neither he nor Laura (who, by now, had received her own degree) were permitted to work. They had no money. Whatever pieces of furniture and books Laura managed to get out of Germany were sold so that they might eat. Living in an unheated flat, Fritz would get up at five or six each morning to light a small stove. Laura would scrub floors, something she had never done before, in freezing temperatures. On rare occasions, they would buy Ren a banana, which was, for her, “an absolute luxury.” More turmoil ensued when the woman Fritz had had his affair with started to make trouble, for Fritz was quite discreet and secretive about any extramarital involvements in those days. Laura’s suffering a miscarriage and having a subsequent depression added to the family’s woes.

  Fritz knew they had to leave, to get as far away from the impending Holocaust as possible. He had some correspondence with A. A. Brill, the dean of American psychoanalysts, who was willing to help him come to the United States. But then, Ernest Jones, who worked hard to help the refugee analysts, told him of a position in South Africa. Recalling his previous aversion to New York and filled with some romantic visions of Africa, Fritz chose the latter.

  4. South Africa

  Determined to hurdle the language barrier that contributed to his earlier isolation in New York, Fritz taught himself English during the three-week voyage to South Africa aboard the Balmoral Castle. Upon arrival, his instant language program brought about instant success. The contrast between the poverty of Holland and the wealth Fritz and Laura acquired in Johannesburg was mind-boggling to them both.

  Almost immediately, both of them established full-time practices. The founder of The South African Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1935, Fritz sought to establish a training center for potential analysts. His title was more impressive than the fact that Fritz was, at the time, the only psychoanalyst in the country. On August 23, 1935, their second child, Steve, was born. Within one year they managed to build the first Bauhaus-style home in a wealthy suburb, replete with swimming pool, tennis courts, ice-skating rink, a housekeeper, two servants, and an imported nurse for the children.

  In addition to his work, his newfound wealth afforded Fritz a great opportunity for playing. There was swimming, skating, tennis, Ping-Pong, vacations to Durban and other areas on the coast to enjoy the Indian Ocean, drives to Zululand, and flying lessons. Fritz became so proficient a pilot that he intended to fly his own craft to the Psychoanalytic Congress in Czechoslovakia in 1936, failing to do so only because someone outbid him on the purchase of the craft, offering more than Fritz felt it was worth. So, he returned to Europe as he had left, by boat.

  Fritz had prepared a paper to deliver at the Congress, entitled “Oral Resistances.” Although he did not realize it at the time, that paper would eventually come to lie at the heart of his first book, Ego, Hunger and Aggression, for “Oral Resistances” stressed the unique importance of the infant’s relating to the world through the intake of food and the relationship between the adult’s eating habits and his or her current interactions with other people.

  At the time, analytic doctrine was that “resistances”—the patient’s holding back in treatment—were related directly to early toilet-training habits, where children would spite a disciplining mother by withholding their feces. Fritz, hoping to make a contribution to analytic theory, wrote of how these same resistances could be seen even earlier in an angry child’s refusal to take in nourishment.

  He had traveled four thousand miles to attend the Congress. Not only did he hope to have his paper welcomed, but he wanted, as well, to meet with Freud himself. For hadn’t he, Fritz, established a new branch of The Master’s mission in South Africa?

  Neither of these expectations were met. He was given a curt, cool, four-minute audience with The Leader while standing in Freud’s doorway, a foretaste of the icy reception his paper later received from most of the other analysts in attendance. An “I’ll show you; you can’t do this to me” hurt reaction followed.

  In addition to his disappointing meeting with Freud and the lack of respect his paper received from his peers, Fritz was greatly disheartened to find Wilhelm Reich—the analyst who had given him so much—withdrawn, morose, and barely capable of recognizing Fritz.

  From the Congress on, the negative influence of Freud began to exert itself. Fritz’s work was to be forever more marked by his taking frequent swipes at orthodox psychoanalysis. His love/hate relationship to Freud was most accurately described by Fritz himself:

  “Many friends criticize me for my polemical relationship to Freud. ‘You have so much to say, your position is securely grounded in reality. What is this continuous aggressiveness against Freud? Leave him alone and just do your thing.’

  “I can’t do this. Freud, his theories, his influence are much too important for me. My admiration, bewilderment, and vindictiveness are very strong. I am deeply moved by his suffering and courage. I am deeply awed by how much, practically all alone, he achieved with the inadequate mental tools of association psychology and mechanistically oriented philosophy. I am deeply grateful for how much I developed through standing up against him.”

  Fritz was away from his family for about three months. In addition to the time passed a
t the Psychoanalytic Congress, there were visits to family and friends in other parts of Europe. In Holland he saw Liesel, Laura’s younger sister, and alludes, in his writing, to the possibility of having a brief interlude with her (“. . . we had some lovely encounters. Compared to Laura’s heaviness, intellectual and artistic involvement, she was simple, beautiful and flirtatious”). After the Congress, he went off to the Hungarian mountains with Ernest Jones and some sympathetic colleagues.

  His return to Europe led Fritz to realize that his newfound security was little more than a house of cards. His antidogmatic thinking, influenced by dissidents like Horney and Reich, was evident in his paper. The response of his fellow professionals led him to a point where he would no longer be comfortable in or welcome as a member of the psychoanalytic establishment. His personal mentor, Reich, was not in the proper place or proper frame of mind to provide any support or guidance. And the time spent away from his family caused him to recognize that he didn’t miss or need them—that they were a habit more than a passion, an obligation rather than a solution. Laura was the closest friend Fritz had allowed himself since Ferdinand Knopf had been killed in the war. Now, however, this relationship seemed to be dying as he apparently developed a typical case of seven-year restlessness and hungered for new adventures and new stimulation.

  In both Germany and Holland, the family had been close-knit. This was partly a result of the newness of the relationships and partly a result of banding together against the adversities brought on by the Nazi terror. Laura, after her spontaneous abortion in Holland, soon became pregnant again. Fritz, then almost forty-two years old, was opposed to being a father for a second time. He could sense his own growing short temper around children and also wanted more time for himself, not less. He suggested the possibility of a legal abortion to Laura, but she was against it. She promised Fritz that a second child would not restrict him and that she would assume full responsibility. Fritz was unwilling to push hard to interrupt the pregnancy because of Laura’s previous depression over her loss in Holland. And Laura was firmly committed to having another offspring.