Wild Psychoanalysis, Religion, and RaceGeorg Groddeck Talks to Count Hermann von Keyserling (among Others)

This chapter discusses the ideas perceived by the Freudian psychoanalytic associations as marginal because of their theoretical eclecticism. The relationship of the self-declared “wild analyst” Georg Groddeck to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute provides a marginal perspective both geographically and theoretically. Psychoanalysts considered his psychoanalytic thought to be pathbreaking, but the majority labeled it as unscientific and outside the bounds of Freudian psychoanalysis. Groddeck's complex relationship with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and to Freudian psychoanalysis reflects his trajectory from spa medicine to “wild psychoanalysis.” Groddeck introduced himself to Freud by letter in May 1917. He defended his initial rejection of psychoanalysis as being a result of his own sense of competition — reading Freud's work would have destroyed his own claim to originality. Groddeck sought Freud's opinion on whether his work transgressed the “limits of psychoanalytic activity.”