Biographical Note: Helene Deutsch (née Rosenbach) was born on October 9, 1884 in Przemyśl, Poland. As an education was out of reach for a Jewish woman in Poland, she went to study medicine and psychiatry to Vienna and Munich. She received a medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1913, shortly after her marriage to Felix Deutsch. First a psychiatrist at the Vienna University Psychiatric Clinic, and soon a student, assistant, and analysand of Sigmund Freud, she was considered a pioneer of the women’s psychology. Helene Deutsch joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1918 and became its director in 1924. In 1935 Helene Deutsch left Vienna for the USA and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she later was joined by her husband and son. A member of American Psychoanalytic Association since 1936, and a president of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in 1939-1941, she trained anlysts, wrote many papers and books, including her famous “The Psychology of Women”, and conducted her remarkable studies of reactions to surgery, anesthesia, child-birth, adolescence, and psychomythology. Helen Deutsch died on March 29th, 1982 at the age of ninety-seven.
Summary: The collection contains correspondence with Sigmund and Anna Freud (copies), miscellaneous notes, reflections, and papers by and about Helene Deutsch, her autobiography and obituaries. You can also refer to our Oral History Interviews collection in Audiovisual Materials for an interview with Helene Deutsch in March 1973 (audio cassette 383) as well as an interview with her son Martin Deutsch from the late 1980s (audio cassette 385), and an interview of Suzanne and Martin Deutsch in 2002 (audio cassette 497), all conducted and recorded by Dr. Sanford Gifford. Please note that a larger Helen Deutsch collection is located at the Radcliff College Archive of the Schlesinger Library
Finding Aid for this collection is available here (viewing it requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Related BPSI Collections
Assorted Correspondence, 1872-1996
Audiovisual Materials
Deutsch, Felix (1884-1964)
Related Archives
Helen Deutsch Papers at Schlesinger Library, Radcliff College
Paul Roazen Papers at Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University
Related Sites
Helene Deutsch: intro by the Sigmund Freud Archives
Deutsch-Rosenbach, Helen: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
Book of the Times by John Gross. A book review on “Helene Deutsch: A Psychoanalyst’s Life” by Paul Roazen. New York Times Archives, 1985.
