Deutsch, Hélène, 1884-1982

<p xmlns="urn:isbn:1-931666-33-4">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, Helene Deutsch 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 Herman Lieberman 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. In 1912, shortly before her graduation, she married Dr. Felix Deutsch, an internist. Their son Martin was born in 1917. During World War I, Helene Deutsch 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. In 1923, afflicted by depression, she left her husband in Austria and went to Berlin to be analyzed by Karl Abraham. 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 Deutschs left Austria in 1934 and came to Boston, where Helene Deutsch resumed private practice and was an active member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. Helene Deutsch 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).</p>
<citation xmlns="urn:isbn:1-931666-33-4">From the guide to the Papers of Helene Deutsch, 1922-1992, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)</citation>

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