Deutsch, Hélène, 1884-1982

Helene (Rosenbach) Deutsch, psychoanalyst, teacher, and writer, was born on October 9, 1884, in Przemysl, Galicia (Austria-Hungary), the youngest daughter of Regina and Wilhelm Rosenbach; her father was a prominent lawyer. At age sixteen, HD fell in love with Herman Lieberman, a lawyer and leader of the Polish Social Democratic Party, and became an ardent political activist, organizing strikes and campaigning for the rights of women to education and employment. In 1907 she followed HL to Vienna where he was elected to parliament, and enrolled in the Medical School of the University of Vienna. She was soon absorbed in the study of medicine and in 1912, shortly before her graduation, married Dr. Felix Deutsch, an internist. Their son Martin was born in 1917. During World War I, HD gained clinical experience in psychiatry at the Wagner-Jauregg Clinic in Vienna. She was the first of Sigmund Freud's women students to undergo analysis with him, and she became a member of his circle of friends and colleagues. A respected teacher and diagnostician, she founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924, and was its director for nine years. With the rise of Hitler, the Deutsches left Austria in 1934 and came to Boston, where HD resumed private practice and was an active member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. HD was the author of The Psychology of Women, a two-volume study (1944, 1945); Neuroses and Character Types: Clinical Psychoanalytic Studies (1965); Selected Problems of Adolescence (1967); and Confrontations With Myself (1973), an autobiography. She died in Cambridge on March 29, 1982. For a detailed account of her life, see Helene Deutsch, A Psychoanalyst's Life, by Paul Roazen (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985).

From the guide to the Papers, 1900-1983, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)