Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda, 1889-1957

Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (October 23, 1889 in Karlsruhe, Germany – April 28, 1957 in Rockville, Maryland) was a German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud who immigrated to America during World War II. She was a pioneer for women in science, specifically within psychology and the treatment of schizophrenia. She is known for coining the now widely debunked term Schizophrenogenic mother. In 1948, she wrote "“the schizophrenic is painfully distrustful and resentful of other people, due to the severe early warp and rejection he encountered in important people of his infancy and childhood, as a rule, mainly in a schizophrenogenic mother”.[1]


Fromm-Reichmann was born to Adolf and Klara Reichmann in Karlsruhe, German Empire in 1889.

At age 36, Frieda began an affair with her patient, Erich Seligmann Fromm (1900-1980), who was a student of psychoanalysis and social psychology. They met at Weißer Hirsch sanatorium where Frieda analyzed Erich as part of his training. Once they fell in love, she stopped analyzing him and they married in 1926 (one year after her father's death).[4] Erich developed tuberculosis, which Frieda believed was a physiological expression of psychological distress. The couple agreed that Erich would move to Switzerland to undergo specialized treatment and to live apart. However, after Erich immigrated into the United States of America in 1933, he sponsored her affidavit to flee Germany after Nazi occupation in 1934. They officially divorced in 1942. Frieda never remarried and never had biological children.

Despite having no biological children, Frieda served as a "mother" figure to her patients, friends, and family. During World War II, she financially supported more than a dozen family and friends, and advocated for their safe escape from persecution by the Nazis. Although she pleaded with her sisters and mother to also emigrate to the United States, they remained in England and Palestine. Frieda developed deep meaningful friendships with colleagues Gertrud Jacob and Hilde Bruch, loved to play piano and listen to classical music, and dote on her beloved cocker spaniels. When Gertrud Jacob fell ill also with tuberculosis, Frieda moved with her to Santa Fe, NM to seek specialized treatment. Unfortunately Jacob died during surgery while Frieda was back in Rockville, MD. Every summer after, Frieda spent two months at her home in Santa Fe, NM.

She suffered from a hereditary deafness and died from a heart attack in 1957 at her home at the Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. Her home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2021, in recognition of her influence in the development of interpersonal psychoanalysis in the mid-20th century.