Caricatures of 88 Pioneers in Psychoanalysis, Drawn from Life at the Eighth International Psychoanalytic Congress

摘要

For its Eighth Congress in April 1924, the International Psychoanalytic Association returned to Salzburg, Austria, which had been the scene of the very first congress of psychoanalysts held in 1908. The Association had made great progress and the meeting was regarded as a rather special occasion. It was marked by the execution of a series of caricatures of 88 participants, pioneers of psychoanalysis, made by two famous artists, Olga Szekely-Kovacs and Robert Bereny. The original drawings were presented to Freud, the patron saint of the Association, who was prevented by illness from attending, and a private edition was issued to those taking part in the Congress. One hesitates to comment on anything connected with psychoanalysis, for may not these drawings be a form of Rorschach test in disguise? However, taking our courage in both hands, we will hazard the opinion that they are fiendishly clever and amusing. In the case of some of the psychoanalysts depicted and whom we have known (from a distance), they hit off their subjects to the life. It has been remarked by many authorities on the subject that very few caricatures carry their full message unless they are accompanied by some inscription or caption. It would have been a pleasing exercise of fancy if the compiler or editor of these brilliant sketches had appended such captions; mere titles, as devised by "Spy" for his wonderful series of Vanity Fair cartoons of Victorian medical worthies, would have provided considerable scope for ingenuity. The edition now made available to a wider public contains, in addition to the caricatures, Dr. Ernest Jones's presidential address to the 1924 Congress and a brief Publishers' Note. From the purely bibliographical point of view this little publication is perhaps something of a curiosity. The literature of medical congresses is indeed formidable and varied, but although several occasional congress publications have included caricatures or sketches of participants, there can have been few examples of separate volumes devoted to such a purpose. This little book should certainly be welcomed as a pleasing latter-day example of an almost vanished form of medical art.