Questions and worries: On the correspondence between Grete Bibring and Anna Freud 1949–1975

Abstract

ABSTRACT Grete Bibring (1899–1977) was a representative of the second generation of analysts. Having emigrated from Vienna to London in 1938, she left for Boston in 1941 where she made a remarkable career. In 1946, she became head of the department of psychiatry at the Beth Israel Hospital at Harvard and, from 1961, the first woman professor of medicine there. She maintained a connection with European psychoanalysis in the person of Anna Freud, with whom she corresponded regularly. Their letters contain an interesting exchange of ideas about psychoanalytic institutions (e.g. the American Psychoanalytical Association) and papers (e.g. on pregnancy). It is also the testimony of an exceptional friendship.