Yugoslavia (Ex-)

YUGOSLAVIA (EX-)

Three men—Stjepan Betlheim, Hugo Klajn, and Nichola Sugar—born at the end of the nineteenth century are at the root of psychoanalysis in Yugoslavia. Having completed their medical studies and specialized in neuropsychiatry in Germany and Austria, their return to what was then the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes marked the beginning of the spread of psychoanalytic ideas in this region. They had to contend with the resistance of the psychiatric milieu and the polite interest of the intellectuals, except in Belgrade where they met with great success in artistic circles.

Because they were Jews, these pioneers naturally found themselves in the Resistance during World War II. The victory over fascism and Nazism conferred an authority on them that translated into the creation of psychoanalytically informed treatment centers.

Psychoanalytic thinking spread very rapidly in Sarajevo under the impetus of Dr. Aleksandar Markovic, and in Ljubljana where a psychologist, Leopold Bregant, and a psychiatrist, Milan Kobal, played an important role.

A new generation of Slovene psychoanalysts was being trained in the neighboring Italian city of Trieste. But it was mainly in Croatia and Serbia that the development was decisive. The war (1991-1995) put an end, for the moment, to scientific exchanges between Serb and Croatian analysts. However, both of these groups managed under difficult conditions to maintain vital contact with Western analysts, particularly in France and Italy.

Croatia

The history of psychoanalysis in Croatia is linked to the name of Stjepan Betlheim (1898-1970). He studied medicine in Graz and Vienna. After a first analysis with Paul Schilder, he completed his training with Sándor Radó, whom Abraham Arden Brill invited in 1932 to organize an institute of psychoanalysis in New York. Karen Horney in Berlin and Helene Deutsch in Vienna supervised Betlheim's first analyses. An "associate member" of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1928, he returned to Zagreb that same year. Until World War II he divided his time between a neuropsychiatric department and psychoanalysis in private practice. In 1948 his good reputation enabled him to introduce psychoanalysis in the medical faculty, and in 1953 to create a center for psychotherapeutic treatment in the framework of the neuropsychiatric clinic, thus offering the resources of psychoanalysis and its psychotherapeutic applications for individuals and groups. In 1952 he was elected a "direct member" of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). In 1963 he published The Neuroses and Their Treatment, while simultaneously campaigning for the creation of an Association of Yugoslav Psychotherapists. The first steps in this direction were taken in 1964 at the Congress of Neuropsychiatrists at Ohrid, and the project bore fruit in Split in 1968.

In the period after World War II Stjepan Betlheim personally psychoanalyzed his first students: Duska Blazevic, Eugenie Cividini-Stranic, and Edouard Klain. At the same time he created the Mokrice seminar, which, from 1966 until 1991, was a meeting place for therapists from the different Republics constituting the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. Professor Maja Beck-Dvorzak organized the psychoanalytic treatment of children and adolescents, followed by Professor S. Nikolic, who introduced the technique of the psychoanalytic psychodrama after a stay in Paris in Serge Lebovici's department, while undergoing personal analysis with Jean Gillibert (1976-1979). In Zagreb Duska Blazevic and Edouard Klain created a psychoanalytically oriented review, Psychoterapja. It is the responsibility of the remaining members of this group to establish regular relations with the IPA, the only body authorized to recognize its training courses.

Serbia

Two men contributed initially to opening Belgrade up to psychoanalysis. The first, Hugo Klajn (1894-1981), physician and psychiatrist, did his personal analysis in 1922 with Paul Schilder in Vienna. On his return to Belgrade his public lectures and translation of a considerable part of Freud's work met with an immediate success. He devoted himself mainly to theatre. As director of the Yugoslav dramatic theatre and Studio 122, his directing enriched the cultural domain. In 1955 he published War Neuroses in Yugoslavs.

Nikola Sugar (1897-1945) was the second of these founding fathers. He was analyzed in Berlin between 1922 and 1925 by Felix Boehm, then in Vienna between 1925 and 1927 by Paul Schilder. An associate member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society from 1925 to 1933, he was a full member from 1935 to 1938. When he returned to the city of Subotica (Vojvodina), he also became a member of Budapest Psychoanalytic Society. In 1938 he founded the first psychoanalytic association in Belgrade. Without having any formal character, it comprised nine members: six physicians, psychiatrists, and neurologists, and three philosophy professors. Meetings were held in the Belgrade Arts Faculty and were soon forbidden under the regency of Prince Paul, who was close to Italy, Bulgaria, and Nazi Germany. Sugar was deported and died.

Two of Sugar's patients, Vladislav Klajn (1909-1984) and especially Vojin Matic (born 1911) were prolific in developing psychoanalytic activities. The IPA awarded an honorary diploma to Professor Vojin Matic at the San Francisco Congress in 1995. Vojin Matic was an assistant at the university neuropsychiatric clinic until 1952, before becoming a professor at the Arts Faculty until his retirement. In 1953 he founded the Medico-Psychopedagogical Center, the first of its kind in Yugoslavia. Ten years later the center was closed but continued to be active in the form of the Institute for Mental Health. In relation with the European Federation of Psychoanalysis, the Belgrade group organized the Seminar for Eastern Countries in 1990. The subject was "Transference and Counter-Transference." Protocols for psychoanalytic treatment were presented by S. Borovejki (Zagreb), V. Brzev (Belgrade), M. Cicek (Zagreb), I. Ivanovic and G. Marinkow (Belgrade). This seminar brought together more than eighty participants from Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, lCzechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia) and Western Europe (Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, and Italy). Professors Nevenka Tadic, Ksenija Kondic-Belos, and Tamara Stajner-Popovic concentrated particularly on the development of psychoanalytic treatment for children and adolescents. The San Francisco Congress elected Stajner-Popovic and four of her colleagues direct members of the IPA. This election was the fruit of efforts by Hanna Groen-Prakken (of Holland) and John Kafka (of the United States) within the IPA. It opened the way for the constitution of a study group, then the formation of a provisional society, which could lead this group to recognition as a constituent society of the IPA.

Michel Vincent

Bibliography

Diatkine, Gilbert, Gibeault, Alain, Gibeault, Monique, and Vincent, Michel. (1993). La psychanalyse en Europe orientale. In La Psychanalyse et l'Europe de 1993, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Nikolic, S. (1987). La psychiatrie en Yougoslavie. Psychiatrie française, 6, 41-51.