Paul Ornstein and Daniel Jacobs met at Dr. Ornstein’s home on February 19, 2016, to talk about his new book “Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst” written with Helen Epstein and published by Plunkett Lake Press in 2015. The book is the unusual memoir of a Holocaust survivor and physician who became prominent in American psychoanalysis and a leader of the psychoanalytic Self Psychology movement.
Paul Ornstein, MD, was born in Hajdúnánás, Hungary in 1924 and educated at the Franz Josef Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest, where he discovered psychoanalysis. After surviving the Holocaust in Hungary, he received his degree in medicine from the University of Heidelberg, then emigrated to the United States and became a leading figure in psychoanalytic self-psychology. Dr. Ornstein is a graduate of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis at the University of Cincinnati Medical School, and a Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He co-authored Focal Psychotherapy: An Example of Applied Psychoanalysis with Michael and Enid Balint and edited The Search for the Self: selected writings of Heinz Kohut.
Helen Epstein is the author or co-author of seven books of literary non-fiction including the two memoirs “Children of the Holocaust” and “Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for her Mother’sHistory”, as well as the biography “Joe Papp: An American Life”. All three books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She is also the translator from the Czech of “Acting in Terezin” by Vlasta Schonova and the late Heda Margolius Kovaly’s classic memoir “Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968”. She recently edited and published the free e-book “Archivist on a Bicycle, a anthology of essays in honor of the Czech historian and archivist Jiri Fiedler”.
Daniel Jacobs, MD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst and Director of the Hanns Sachs Library and Archive at BPSI. He is also a Training Analyst for the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute and is on the faculty of the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. Since 2003, he has been Director of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies at Princeton and Aspen and is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Click on the video to watch the full interview. Contact Olga Umansky at library@bpsi.org if you have any questions, experience any technical problems or wish to borrow this interview on a DVD. Watch other interviews in this BPSI webcast series.
