The Black Notebook. Edith Jacobson’s prison notes 1935/1936

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Jewish emigrant Edith Jacobson is not only known as one of the most important psychoanalysts of the 20th century, but also for her participation in the leftist resistance group Neu Beginnen and her long prison sentence for “high treason” in Berlin. She escaped with the help of Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich. Personal notes from the first days of her detention were considered lost, but remained in a private household for almost 80 years. This so-called “black booklet” contains poems and essay fragments on the effects of imprisonment on female prisoners and on psychoanalytic ideas about paranoia. The author of this paper found the prison records, made them accessible for the first time, and traces the story of this discovery. The paper sheds light on the texts it contains, the influence of detention on Jacobson's later work, and the reactions of the psychoanalytic community to her arrest.