Borgos, Anna. 2018. Holnaplányok: Nők a pszichoanalízis budapesti iskolájában ('Girls of Tomorrow: Women in the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis'). Budapest: Noran Libro Kiadó. 300 pp. Illus.

Abstract

Holnaplányok: Nők a pszichoanalízis budapesti iskolájában ['Girls of Tomorrow: Women in the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis'] explores the lives of the first two generations of Hungarian female psychoanalysts from the early twentieth century to the post World War II era. Based on extensive research and a wide array of sources, the book provides not only captivating life stories of some of the most prominent female Hungarian psychoanalysts but also an illuminating portrayal of the tumultuous relationship of the experiences of these New Woman, Jewishness, and psychoanalysis during the first half of the twentieth century. The book opens with a brief overview of classical psychoanalytical theories on womanhood. In her discussion of the psychoanalytical ideas of Sigmund Freud and his followers on femininity and female sexuality, Anna Borgos sets the stage for the inherent contradiction between psychoanalytical theories as embedded in and propagating a patriarchal and malecentered world and psychoanalysis as a profession that enables the success and high representation of women among its practitioners. While Freud, along with many of his male colleagues, theorized women as passive and considered intellectual aspirations in women as a masculine wish serving to compensate for failed femininity, Borgos highlights how, in practice, women took on important roles within the psychoanalytical profession from early on. Borgos's overview of Freudian psychoanalytical theories and terminology on women’s “passivity, masochisms, narcissism and penis envy” (25) and her introduction of some of the most wellknown female analysists in Freud’s immediate circle (including Anna Freud, Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Joan Riviere, Melanie Klein, Sabina Spielrein, and Lou Andreas-Salomé) exemplifies her ability to distill complex psychoanalytical theories for even a general audience. This capacity, which reverberates throughout the entire book, along with a nuanced approach to discussing psychoanalytical ideas, shows that already in the profession’s earliest days there were varied alternative theoretical views on women. Ultimately, Borgos illustrates how, in theorizing about women, Freud and his followers were deeply rooted in the bourgeois gender norms of their times. At the same time, this book pays attention not only to what Freud said but also to what he did as a proponent of women’s equality, sexual education, and female psychoanalysts. In all these regards Freud is proven to have lived and acted ahead of his time.