During my trips, talking to emigrant Hungarians I started to think about the psychological aspects and various ways of interpreting emigration. Contemplating the relationship to the nation of origin, the strategy of assimilation, and transgenerational effects made me notice seemingly parallel features between “symptomatic” effects of emigration and those of other social traumas, both among emigrants, who chose to leave, and their descendants.

A while ago, I was in Dubai and met many immigrants who had built their new worlds—a usual journey through centuries of space and time—in just a few short years. Where had the traumas of these immigrants and natives gone? In how many different and unrelated stories can people find common points in the present without a common past? In Dubai, everybody’s vertical, ancestral, life story becomes a young horizontal coexistence, in which skyscrapers show nothing but the future. The task of assimilation hides the past, but the progress of time will evoke it. In Europe we are used to thousand-year histories, filled with many traumas. We hold on to our ancestral roots and pass down our culture, traditions and traumas from generation to generation. Are we immigrating into traumas? Are we emigrating from traumas?

This study has been created from a virtual emigrant’s viewpoint, that is, mine. I try to understand the psychic reality from the “departure side” that accompanies the identity changes of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who left their country of origin after WWII. My hypothesis is that Holocaust survivors’ trauma management and coping strategies are different from those who remained in the place of suffering and assimilated into an abusing society. Changing the location, that is, emigration from the place of trauma can lead to the healing of psychic wounds, and strengthen the capacity of resilience.

HISTORY, ASSIMILATION, SURVIVAL

Robert Prince (2015) writes about the narratives of Holocaust survivors, who emigrated to the United States, and emphasizes that it is impossible to discuss the consequences of extreme events, like the Holocaust, 70 years later, without consideration of historical meaning and social context with which they are entwined. In this section I will attempt to consider the historical meanings and social contexts for the Hungarian Jewish diaspora.

In the late 18th century, the Kingdom of Hungary (then part of the Habsburg Empire), unlike its neighbors, passed several laws that favored the assimilation of the Jewish people. The “Patent of Toleration” and the “Edict of Tolerance” by Joseph II (1781–1782) eased many restrictions and encouraged the Jewish people to assimilate into the German-speaking ethnic group. In the 19th century, “The Law of 1840” permitted the free settlement of the Jewish people, except in mining towns. The “Emancipation Act,” following the Compromise in 1867 (the creation of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire), declared the civil and political emancipation of the Jewish people, and in 1895, Judaism was declared equal to other religions.

This favorable atmosphere and opportunities, unparalleled in Europe, rapidly increased the immigration of Jews from neighboring countries2, especially Eastern European Galicia. As a result of immigration, the Jewish population in Austria-Hungary had reached nearly one million at the turn of the 20th century. Anti-Semitism, although with diminishing intensity, still existed, but due to their emancipation and linguistic assimilation, the Jews lived in socially-stable and improving circumstances. Following WWI, after the Treaty of Trianon (1920), when two-thirds of Hungary’s territory was disannexed, about half of the Jewish population stayed in the truncated motherland3. Thus, the other half, those living in the disconnected territories became both Hungarian and Jewish minorities at the same time. The very brief re-annexation of former territories in 1938, meant the reacquisition of their motherland. During the previous years of assimilation many Jews neglected or abandoned their religion, adopted Hungarian customs and culture, Hungarianized their names, and married Christians. They established roots in the body of their host nation.

The progress of Nazi ideology after WWI terminated this. During this period of increasing discrimination several anti-Semitic Laws were passed (1920-Numerus clausus, 1938, 1939, 1941-Jewish Laws) and eventually all former assimilation laws were overturned. The Jewish people suddenly realized that there was no guarantee of being accepted, and the Jewish minority who had already assimilated became “alien” again. The solid protection proved to be an illusion. In spite of this, most of those excluded, trusting the good mother function of their country (Virág, 1995)4, and accepting the processes, were moving to their horrendous destiny5. They thought: “We are already Hungarians. It is impossible that the motherland that has accepted us, and the one we have done so much good for, would treat us like this” (Kovács & Melegh, 2000, p. 103). Due to the changes in public values, their social status gradually disappeared, and ethnic identity became the defining factor of identity. Those persecuted, losing their social roles, split the totality of their psychic reality and exiled it into their unconscious using negation, denial, or dissociation as defenses against a horrific reality, and a delayed awareness of that reality until it was too late. After WWII, experiencing an intrapsychic and interpersonal void, they were challenged to rebuild a new and complex identity again (Erős, 2001)6. It was an important question: how could an individual rebuild and re-connect the pieces of his shattered identity?

“Wandering” As a Form of Existence and Its Role in Forming Jewish Identity

The Hungarian survivors of concentration camps numbered about 90,000 to 120,000. Many did not return to Hungary; often those who did, thought about emigrating, especially to Palestine or later to Israel. In 1946, there were roughly 200,000 Jewish people in Hungary. In the second half of the 1940s, with the help of Zionist organizations, about 115,000 of these made Aliyah (the immigration of Jews to Israel), but many emigrated to America, Western Europe, and various other countries, creating Hungarian Jewish colonies. Due to the previous assimilation, the socio-cultural norms, language, and ethnicity of the abandoned country were dominant during this new assimilation process, even when an immigrant knew the language of the new country. In those Hungarian Jewish communities, papers were published in Hungarian, and Hungarian publishers and associations were established (Borbándi, 1985).

Returning to the place of survival and suffering, but also to the motherland and using their mother tongue again, made the reassimilation process partly easier and partly more difficult (Virág, 1984, 1995, 1996a, b). This return to the place of trauma was only possible through the use of unconscious defensive mechanisms: negation, disavowal, and denial. In Hungary, after the war, fears caused by the oppressive communist regime continued, partly because of the memories of traumatic dislocations, and partly because of extreme situations that were reoccurring in reality. Some of those who stayed in the motherland, encapsulating their trauma, identified with the communist system, and partly abandoning their pre-war identity, rebuilt a self (Ritter, 2003, 2012).

The history of the Jewish people can also be seen in the history of wandering, commemorated each year at Pesach. Wandering, as a foundational pillar of their collective memory, gained significance anew in the psychic reality of Jewish persons after the Holocaust. Survival and emigration merged into a “Shoah-super-narrative”, that is, emigration after 1945 was brought into the same context as the escape from and the survival of Shoah. Emigrants, following their survival instinct, felt: “This country, where terrible things happened, must be left, and we must continue to live if it already was provided for us” (Kovács & Melegh, 2000, p. 107).

Being traumatically excluded from the body of the nation, was deeply injurious, and it strongly motivated emigration. Emigrants, regaining control, left the place of trauma, and instead of being passively exiled by others, their emigration became their own active decision, that they could use to start a new history from another perspective. They aspired to a new beginning. Survivors’ feelings of rootlessness were replaced by the phantasy of the safety of emigration, which, due to its nature, became more complex than they had expected (Ritter, 2012, 2014). Even the wandering of emigrants’ descendants may have been motivated by their ancestry, being passed down the generations. These factors contribute to the ideology of the collective identity forming a history of “being on the road”, that is, the “wandering Jew” pattern of fate (Kovács & Melegh, 2000).

As the Hungarian Jewish joke goes: Uncle Kohn emigrates to Israel, but he returns soon. When he applies for an emigration passport again, the Hungarian police officer asks him: Why don’t you make up your mind whether it is better in Hungary, or in Israel? On the airplane, says Mr. Kohn (as quoted in Sík, 2000, p. 160).

Yehosua, an Israeli novelist, writes in his essay “Exile as a Neurotic Condition” (quoted by Hoffmann, 2016, p. 213) that Jews use the existence of their long diaspora so that they can feel excluded from and marginalized in a given society. Transition creates an opportunity for them to look back in nostalgia to their past and long for the ideal home where they can arrive at some time. Thus, if they want, they do not need to take part in daily problems and conflicts in the place where they actually live. This is the stabilization of the transitional nature and being always on the road. Permanently splitting the world into “before and after” allows them to disregard the changing reality of both the country that they have left and the country where they are actually living. The collective dynamic of a transitional nature is forgotten as individuals assimilate and settle down.

A contemporary example of wandering as the collective Jewish fate can be seen in the poem entitled “Trance” from the Collection of Poems: The Man who Carried his Roots in his Shoes by Géza Röhrig (2016), the main character of the film Son of Saul (Nemes & Stalter, 2015).

figure a

ARRIVAL, MOURNING, ASSIMILATION, TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMAS

Today, analysts think that acculturation is not linear, but a complex dynamic process which mobilizes many more psychological problems in the emigrant generation than previously thought. Emigration (and the persecution of Jews), from an intrapsychic point of view, is an experience of disorganizing pain and frustration (Ainslie, Tummala-Narra, Harlem, Barbanel & Ruth, 2013). The pre-traumatic peacetime is tied to a beneficial building of the self (Ritter, 2015). The new identity is being built with a gradually-fading old memory and with significant losses, including experimental and cultural elements, roles, language, relationships, living space, and the perceived milieu. This study, however, sees it as the choice to build a new identity, which is not the result of external pressure but an active and conscious intention by the immigrant.

Preverbal, unconscious experience (Winnicott, 1967) implies the revival of the developmental stage of the transitional object/space. Winnicott’s transitional space is the area of potential of being in-between: here and there, the world of external objects and internal fantasies, the transition between self and not self, the place where we discover and create the world. Psychoanalysts draw a parallel between Winnicott’s transitional space, which is a metaphor of internal space, to apply to the concrete external experience of transition from place to place of the immigrants’ experience, when they face a radical change in surroundings (González, 2016; Beltsiou, 2016). Assimilation into the new surroundings allows the individuals to see themselves in a new light and experience how psychic reality functions in the real world. Based on my observation, good memories and remembering the “good old days” can also function as transitional objects in other situations too; if you can snuggle up to them when in need of comfort during difficult situations. This can be applied in similar situations7.

Surviving the Holocaust means remorse and mission, joy and mourning, coupled with the joy and mourning of separation because of emigration. Jewish emigrants are perennial mourners (Volkan, 2007). The mourning process in the emigration is crucial for assimilation (Akhtar, 2011).

Those whose lives are dominated by the unthinkable, unnameable, and unspeakable have adapted badly, and lost the ability of enduring the unknown in the mental space (Gampel, 1998). Their memories are hidden in crypts, continue to impact thinking, and thereby cause them to lose the ability to endure the unknown in the mental space (Abraham & Torok, 1994a) and the ability to adapt to a new environment. Trauma usually causes splitting between present and past, where the traumatic event is replayed in an endless present, a compulsion to repeat the past in the present, preventing psychic mourning and the ultimate burial (Ritter, 2003, 2015). Holocaust survivors must face this broken time, the missing future and the impact of the denied past (Baum, 2013)8. At the same time, emigration with the force of assimilation may help rupture this crystallized condition. The questions “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where I am heading? What would I like? What living space do I need?” arise before and during emigration and also upon arrival. In a successful assimilation either in the country of origin or in emigration after several generations, individuals may lose their family history. As a result of hiding, they seem to start from scratch without roots (Boulanger, 2015). In the case of emigration this does not apply only to those with Jewish identities. It can often be observed that after the second generation, the origin of the grandparents is lost and the descendants are only conscious of experiences in their “current country of living.” Only transgenerational phantoms evoke the buried past. Changing names and keeping silent about the past belong to the identity that parents fantasize about for the future of their children. It is often a decision that seems practical. Even when a Jewish immigrant maintains a connection with their Jewish identity and heritage, they will also seem to be a “native citizen” of their new country. The parents’ hope is that their children will belong to the mainstream society of the host country (Tummala-Narra, 2013), and this is an attempt to end the collective history of suffering (see Lijtmaer, 2017). Nevertheless, in spite of the efforts of survivors, transgenerational traumas may continue to impact future generations (Ritter, 2014).

Scientific literature doesn’t make distinctions between various histories of individual suffering (of Holocaust survivors and of emigrant Holocaust survivors) and the histories of collective suffering based on the collective memory of survivors (Ritter, 2003, 2015). The possibility of annihilation affected everyone; the possibility of death became everybody’s daily existence. While in an individual history of suffering and identity it is important to know where and how someone survived the war: whether they were they hiding or in a ghetto; whether they managed to escape to another country, or how they managed to survive. As time passes and one gets more distant from the Holocaust, personal experience fades and collective experience becomes more emphasized, and the Holocaust becomes a turning point. However, it is not just one point, as it is often seen, but the culmination of a thousand years of persecution of culture.

The trauma punched a hole in the individual’s memory. Silence, as negation of the indescribable, predominates; and with temporal and spatial distance, becomes unrepresentable. In the absence of the possibility of symbolic representation, the trauma becomes unspeakable. Breaking the silence may happen after a certain latency, when the personal nature of past events has become weaker and traumatic family stories, collective memories, have become legend-like, those affected may find it easier to handle them after alienating and depersonalizing the narratives (Bar-On, 1995). The memories of the “experienced past”, of the survivor is replaced by the “remembering past” of the descendants, as historical (Ritter, 2014)9. The memories of individual traumas form a part of the cultural memory and can be felt in their “radioactivity”10, and stories become histories transmitted in various ways down through the generations. In the decades ahead, when all witnesses die, there will be a turning point in narratives about the Holocaust, the communicative memory will become part of the cultural memory (Bar-On, 1995).

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND EMIGRATION

Imre Hermann, on the authority of Freud, emphasizes in his book, entitled Psychoanalysis as a Method, that psychoanalysis cannot account for a path in life not taken. However, psychoanalysis, with the help of interpretations of repressed trauma, is able to recreate continuity disrupted because of a trauma. The ultimate goal of psychoanalysis is to help people find their own identity (Hermann, 1933, p. 124).

The question is how can an emigrant Holocaust survivor achieve this—even with the help of a professional, as for example, in the second-generation descendants of the Buenos Aires Jewish community, who all tried to solve their problems of being Jewish and wandering, and their history by psychoanalysis (Kovács, 2005). No matter what these extreme situations are called in the different theories, the psychoanalysis of those surviving a severe social trauma is different from the treatment of neurotics, and requires thorough preparedness by the analyst. The treatment of traumatized and regressed patients requires a different approach than classical Freudian analysis.

Mihály Bálint, an important representative of the Budapest School of psychoanalysis (see Dupont, 2002a, b, 2003), Ferenczi’s main disciple and successor, emigrated with his wife, Alice Balint, to the United Kingdom in 193811. Michael Balint became a prominent member of the “British Middle Group,” as opposed to Freudians or Kleinians of British psychoanalysis, and unfailing worked on the advancement of Ferenczi’s teachings, which are pioneering representations of a different type of psychoanalytic approach. Balint (1968) suggested that in seriously regressive cases including those in the area of the “basic fault”, when words and interpretations are counterproductive, a different therapeutic approach is required:

From time to time a psychoanalyst must make all efforts to avoid becoming a separate and sharply distinct object or behaving like that … he must allow the patient to relate to him as if he was from among the primary substances. It means that he must carry his patient, not actively, but just as the water carries the swimmer, or the earth the walker, that is, he must be available for the patient and endure without special resistance that the patient uses him (Balint, 1968, p. 154).

Ferenczi focused on the relationship between the analyst and the analyzed in the analytic dyad during the process of psychoanalytic therapy. He analyzed the issue of transference and countertransference in many studies—the role and impact of the analyst on the therapeutic relationship. Ferenczi mentioned the phenomenon of the “dialogues of the unconscious” first time in connection with a case study (Ferenczi, 1915, p. 109). In 1932 in the Clinical Diary he returned to it, and he explained it in detail. He wrote about the psychoanalytic process, when the dialogue of two people’s unconscious is also involved, and if the analyst’s childhood traumas match those of the analysand, it will affect the outcome of the therapy (Ferenczi, 1932).

Thanks to the influence of psychoanalytic pioneers, like Ferenczi and Balint, contemporary intersubjective psychoanalytic theory is better suited to work with Holocaust survivors and others traumatized in the course of their lives. Relational psychoanalysts emphasize the analyst’s role during therapy, and in the complex matrix of the interaction between the analyst-analysand dyad through a dialogue of their unconsciouses, establishes a safe space where the unspeakable history of their suffering, can be spoken and become history. The analyst’s role as witness in this process, and the reconstruction of the patient’s history represent the work of the analysis (see Mucci, 2019, this issue). Facing the depth of suffering, therapists experience a wide range of countertransference reactions, including admiration, idealization, helplessness, anger, sorrow, resentment and repression, and a painful awareness of their own helplessness and inability in the treatment (Gampel, 1998).

Working through these countertransference reactions is important for therapy to move forward. Entering into the space of terror and suffering with the patient, and in historicizing disavowed or foreclosed trauma, an alienated aspect of the self can find expression in a new culture.

Emigration has had an influence on the history of psychoanalysis, which can also be considered the “history of wanderings”, since the history of the analyst is often the history of the survivor or the emigrant (Laub, 2016; Beltsiou, 2016). The emigration experiences of psychoanalysts have mainly been studied from social perspectives, and the emigrant analyst has come into focus only recently.12 The analysis of emigration within psychoanalytical framework and its impact on the psychoanalytic community is an interesting narrative. The question that arises is how did the analyst’s experience of being persecuted influence his work and theories?

Psychoanalysts, who emigrated, perhaps due to the deep impact of their traumatic dislocation, were usually conservative and held dogmatic views (see Prince’s 2009 work, where he discusses how psychoanalysis itself was traumatized by the Holocaust). At the same time, analysts rarely connected this with their own history, they repressed it, and focused their energy on assimilation (Beltsiou, 2016). They behaved like other immigrants; they almost never spoke about persecution during the Nazi period, their escape, and the intrapsychic and interpersonal difficulties after their immigration, their immigrant status and the cultural differences they faced in the new country, or their related traumas (Laub, 2016). Nevertheless, we can see that these silent radioactive impacts strongly influenced how they related to the patients, the integration of survivors, how they managed traumas, and ultimately, the new start of both parties. Also, the effect of traumas they suffered influenced their theories and practice, and their observations could have informed a scientific understanding of persecution, emigration and assimilation processes13. Many emigrant analysts adapted well to their new circumstances and culture, contributing to the development of the North American and British psychoanalytic movements, enriching their new countries.

IN CONCLUSION

Change in cultural identity occurs in the context of emigration. Dynamic interaction with the existing intrapsychic structures before emigration, impacted by the cultural and social ways of being of the host country, may result in a well-adapted immigrant who has aspects of both ways of being and may contribute essentially to his new culture.

Refugees, experiencing severe social traumas, such as the Holocaust, were in a much more difficult situation. The internal emotional home was elided, given that they were designated outcast. The challenge to the traumatized emigrant is to rebuild another emotional home, and emigration may provide an opportunity for the emigrant to develop a new hybrid cultural identity. This complex new identity may result in a more integrated identity, in contrast to those who remained in the native country and had to struggle with ongoing triggers to their major social trauma.

Due to the special social status of the Hungarian Jews, and resulting from this, their stronger assimilation efforts, the loss of personal and familial assimilation assumedly caused deeper psychic trauma. Incorporation of trauma suffered over generations, imposed by the host country, then became an intrapsychic enemy and an ongoing source of trauma. Introjection was replaced by incorporation that is, the unmetabolized incorporation of traumas and objects which then became an isolated phantom dwelling in a crypt in the personality (Abraham & Torok, 1994a, b). Returning to the place of suffering and building identity there, reinforced incorporation which compromised the capability for introjection. Trauma in this instance elides mourning, resulting in ongoing melancholia.

Memory can be considered to be like a fabric composed of different strands of narrative, historical, and actual truth. The current strand of the “truth”, and the fabric of memories of events is colored by the needs and state of the personality at the time of recollection, and as well as the historical imprints of the years experienced since then. Therapy of traumatized individuals have many strands of different types of “truth” resulting in a fabric that might be multi colored, but also have blacked out parts. The interpretation possibilities of the strands of the fabric are endless, and can change over time depending on intrapsychic, interpersonal, social, or cultural influences. Social and cultural changes over generations impel professionals to develop theories and technical approaches appropriate to the new reality. Emigration and immigration may become the new global normal. Lessons learned from the Hungarian emigrant experience and its impact on the host country, may help guide future waves of emigrants in adapting to a new culture, and in developing a post-trauma identity in a new beginning (Ritter, 2007).

Notes

  1. 1.

    Andrea Ritter, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in Theoretical Psychoanalysis, and is a psychoanalytic researcher in Budapest, whose work often goes back to the traditions of the Budapest and French psychoanalytical schools. Her professional field, among others, is psychoanalytic explanations of transgenerational trauma theories. Author of several studies, she is co-editor of the volume: Megtalált nyelv. Tanulmányok a Franciaországban élő magyar származású pszichoanalitikusok munkáiból [The Language Found. Studies of Psychoanalysts of Hungarian Origin Living in France] (Ritter & Erős, 2001), and author of the book: Melegek. Ismeretlen ismerősök a 21. Században. Pszichológiai tanulmányok [Gays: Unknown Acquaintances in the 21st Century. Psychological Studies] (2014). Dr. Ritter is also a lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University, a member of the Belgian Commission of Psychologists, and a clinical psychologist in private practice in Budapest.

  2. 2.

    For example, the father of Sándor Ferenczi, Baruch Fränkel, born in Krakow, Poland, emigrated to Hungary in 1830, in his teens, probably to escape anti-Semitic pogroms. In 1879 the Fränkel family changed its name to the Hungarian Ferenczi (Stanton, 1991, pp. 5 & 7), as André Haynal (1988) explains, “out of enthusiasm for the liberal cause, rather than from the desire to forget their Jewish origins, to which they remained very attached” (p. 38). By the way, “in the nationalistic revival at the end of the nineteen century, as a reaction against unjustified Germanification, a very great number of Jews changed their German names”. For example, Michael Balint himself had his family name legally changed from Bergsmann to Balint, much to his father’s dismay” (p. 104). Haynal further writes that after the 1867 Compromise, “Hungary gradually became a fairly liberal country, in whose capital the population was composed of various traditions—a Catholic majority, and Protestant, and Jewish minorities” (p. 35).

  3. 3.

    The Hungarian people living in disannexed territories did not leave their country, but disannexation still meant “emigration into another country”. According to a sentence in a Jewish-Christian family saga, “he did not move from his village for 50 years, but had lived in 3 countries already” (Salamon, 1994). At the same time, following Hungary’s entry into the European Union in 2004, the people both in the disannexed territories and in other countries of Europe could experience belonging to the same nation again, and they could become Hungarian again.

  4. 4.

    The “father state” and “good mother function” is a psychoanalytical metaphor, the symbol of how the state as the leading body of providing laws and protection for individuals and groups fulfills its two major tasks necessary for individuals to feel safe in society (Virág, 1995).

  5. 5.

    Those few who questioned the protective function of society, and especially the members of the Zionist movement, chose active resistance.

  6. 6.

    In his book about narrative constructions of identity and identity building strategies, Az identitás labirintusai [The Labyrinth of Identity], (2001), Ferenc Erős reports in a survey headed by him in which, using examples, he provides a social psychological analysis of the assimilation and identity building strategies of Holocaust survivors returning to Hungary and their descendants in the new social structure.

  7. 7.

    Evidence of that is a few sentences from a novel about the Holocaust, A döntés, [The Choice. Embrace the Possible] (Eger, 2017). In it a boy says to his lover: “I will never forget your eyes. I will never forget your hands”. The girl keeps repeating these two sentences in unimaginably hard situations in the concentration camp, which helps her survive.

  8. 8.

    Professionals dealing with narrative content analysis point out similar processes; emotions, positive and negative experiences organize and reorganize self-narratives. The narrative also shows the unconscious processes. While episodes follow each other in fixed space-time causal order, traumatized people share their memories breaking linearity, organizing them along emotions and using associative time organization. All this happens in a personal time-space, when memory and history meet forming a life narrative, which is shaped in space-time as a result of newer and newer life events (Kónya, 2003; Ehmann & Erős, 2003; László, 2003).

  9. 9.

    I used these phrases to differentiate between the memories of survivors and the memories of those living with survivors after survivors’ death.

  10. 10.

    The term radioactive identification or radioactive nucleus is Yolanda Gampel’s expression for the phenomenon “that are unapproachable, nonrepresentable remnants of the memories of social violence that remain radioactive…” (Gampel, 1998, p. 363).

  11. 11.

    Balint’s parents stayed behind in Hungary, and in December of 1944, during the Nazi round-ups of the Jews, they committed suicide, when they were about to be arrested by the Hungarian Nazis.

  12. 12.

    Judit Mészáros’ 2013 book, Ferenczi and Beyond: Exile of the Budapest School and Solidarity in the Psychoanalytic Movement During the Nazi Years, provides a detailed historical analysis of the emigration waves of the Budapest Psychoanalytic School.

  13. 13.

    Of the first emigrant psychoanalysts arriving in America, quite a few were Hungarian. Here are brief descriptions of some prominent Hungarian psychoanalysts: Sándor Lóránd, of the Budapest School, was born in Kassa, initially trained as a gynecologist, and worked on making delivery painless by using hypnosis. “I cannot see the opportunity of a peaceful life here in the future “ – he said to his analyst and mentor, Ferenczi, in 1924. Lóránd was the first to settle in New York in 1925 and became a prominent member of the American psychoanalytic world. Sándor Radó arrived in NYC in 1932. He was one of the five founding members of the Hungarian Psychoanalytical Association in 1913, initiated by Sándor Ferenczi. In 1920, he emigrated to Berlin, and then to America in 1932. He was the founder of the Columbia University Center for Training and Research in 1944, after a split from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. His theory of the etiology of homosexuality was very conservative and his views laid the foundation for the controversial reparative therapy, which was accepted for many decades. Róbert Bak, trained with Imre Hermann and was a young analyst when he was taken as an inmate to a forced labor camp in Transylvania in 1940, but through his father’s connections, he managed to get a passport, first went to Spain, and later in 1941, on the legendary Casablanca ship, together with his wife, arrived in New York, where he became the training analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Dezső Rapaport, known as David Rapaport, managed to get to the US in 1938, with the help of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Emergency Committee on Relief and Immigration. He was a theoretical scientist, building theoretical connection between philosophy and psychology. He was connected with the Menninger Clinic and the Austen Riggs Center. Géza Róheim, also analyzed by Ferenczi, became the founder of psychoanalytic anthropology. He organized expeditions to North-Australia, and he was first to study the culture of non-European people using psychoanalysis. In the fall of 1939, Róheim settled in NYC and spent the rest of his life there, unable to return to communist controlled Hungary after the war. Ferenc Alexander (Franz Alexander), born in 1891, Budapest, came to the US in 1930, after he accepted an invitation from the University of Chicago. As an interest to readers of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Alexander, the first candidate to complete his analysis in 1921 at the Berlin Psychoanalytic, invited Karen Horney, one of his teachers in Berlin, to become his partner in setting up the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Horney emigrated to Chicago in 1933, stayed there until 1934, when she permanently moved to New York City and became the founding editor of this journal in 1941. Alexander was one of the analysts to work out the theory and practice of psychoanalytical psychosomatic treatment. Radó and Alexander had an important role in helping the American immigration of European—among them Hungarian—psychoanalysts. These Hungarians had a significant role in establishing psychoanalysis in America (Harmat, 1994; Mészáros, 2014; Eros, 2016)