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<p>Physician and [[psychoanalyst ]] Kurt Robert Eissler was [[born ]] in [[Vienna ]] on June 2, 1908, and died in New York on February 17, 1999.</p><p>Eissler was a [[Freud ]] scholar of [[distinction]], one of the most accomplished [[psychoanalysts ]] of his generation, and a prolific and original writer. He was immensely learned, and a captivating and engaging [[speaker ]] whose somewhat wry but engaging [[sense ]] of [[humor ]] augmented the liveliness with which he enriched [[discussion]]. His interests were wide ranging. The [[arts ]] always appealed to him: His [[knowledge ]] of [[them ]] was extensive and he spoke and wrote of them with learning and wisdom. His book on [[Leonardo ]] [[da Vinci ]] (1962) was followed by his two-volume [[psychoanalytic ]] study of [[Goethe ]] (1963), and he made important contributions to the study of <i>[[Hamlet]]</i> (1953, [[1968]]) and Freud's approach to [[literature ]] (1968). He wrote [[about ]] ageing and [[death]], and his book, <i>The [[Psychiatrist ]] and the Dying [[Patient]]</i> (1966), is of permanent [[value]]. In all, he wrote twelve books and nearly one hundred papers, among which his studies of psychoanalytic [[technique ]] attracted wide attention. His writings cast light on many [[subjects]], of which [[schizophrenia]], [[dream ]] [[analysis]], [[female ]] [[sexual ]] [[development]], [[memory ]] and lightning calculation, [[psychological ]] factors in hypertension, esophageal spasm, [[psychology ]] of [[jealousy]], [[body ]] [[image ]] disturbances, and [[suicide ]] will serve as more or less typical random examples.</p><p>Eissler studied psychology at the [[University ]] of Vienna. He took his Ph.D. in 1934 and his M.D. in 1937. After [[training ]] at the Viennese Psychoanalytic Institute, he joined the Viennese Psychoanalytic [[Society]]. There he became an assistant to August Aichhorn, a pioneer in the study and [[treatment ]] of adolescent delinquency, whose <i>Wayward Youth</i> became a classic [[text]]. Following the Anschluss in 1938, Eissler [[left ]] for Chicago and obtained the diploma of the American Board of [[Psychiatry]]. During the Second [[World ]] War, in 1943, he became a captain in the US [[Army ]] Medical [[Corps]], specializing in neuro-psychiatry. That autumn, his brother Erik was killed in a [[concentration camp]], though it was only later that Eissler learned of his fate.</p>

<p>He moved to New York when the war ended, and set up in private [[practice]]. In 1949, he edited <i>Searchlights on Delinquency</i>, dedicated to his old teacher Aichhorn. In 1952, he was one of the founders of the [[Sigmund Freud ]] Archives, deposited in the [[Library ]] of Congress, Washington, DC, and it was as its tireless secretary that he collected so many invaluable documents about, by, or related to Freud and his associates. In this unending task he was greatly helped by [[Anna Freud]], in the context of a warm [[relationship ]] of mutual esteem. He had known her from Viennese days, and she found his [[friendship ]] a great comfort. He established the Anna Freud Foundation in the [[United States]], also in 1952, thus facilitating tax-free donations for the benefit of the Hampstead [[Child ]] [[Therapy ]] Course in [[London]], and the associated [[clinic ]] she had just set up. He strongly supported the [[work ]] of what quickly became the world's leading center for child [[analytic ]] training and for child analytic research. Anna Freud was secure in the knowledge that the Freud Archives were in safe hands, and that Eissler's devotion to all that her [[father ]] stood for was absolute. She was grateful, too, for the invaluable assistance that he gave to Ernest [[Jones ]] in his extensive [[three]]-volume biography of Freud, and to the [[help ]] he gave to [[James ]] Strachey in preparing the standard edition of Freud's psychological works.</p><p>Eissler was actively and deeply concerned about the growing flood of uninformed Freud criticism and the publicity it attracted. In [[particular]], he objected to the misinterpretation of the early [[seduction ]] [[theory]]. While Freud never denied that seduction in [[childhood ]] had serious consequences for development, he was obliged to abandon his views of its [[role ]] in the etiology of [[hysteria]]. Certainly, he would have hated the "recovered memory syndrome." All this is well known to serious

students of [[psychoanalysis]], but Eissler brought to the bare facts an erudition that cast fresh light on the entire issue. An unexpectedly bitter dispute over his successor to the Archives, stemming from allegations that Freud had suppressed the [[truth ]] about his early [[seduction theory]], achieved wide publicity, while Eissler's refutation of the charges failed to be given due weight. Some [[other ]] criticisms of Freud sprang from misunderstandings within the [[profession]], and these were [[subject ]] to Eissler's searching scrutiny. Again, this did not always attract the attention it deserved.</p><p>Eissler could not be said to be optimistic, either about psychoanalysis in particular or [[civilization ]] in general. <i>The Fall of Man</i> (1975) makes [[melancholy ]] [[reading]]. But, when reaffirming his [[pessimism ]] during conversation, he would often add: "You have to go on fighting." He was certainly no idolater of Freud or Anna Freud, but vigorously defended those principles without which, he felt, psychoanalysis would cease to be psychoanalysis.</p><p>He was sometimes accused of imposing undue restrictions on access to the Freud Archives. [[Peter Gay]], for example, in his biography of Freud (1988), after praising Eissler for his diligence in historical research, accused him of "an [[addiction ]] to secrecy" (p. 784) in making a great deal of Freud's correspondence unavailable to scholars. That view is widespread, and Eissler (1993) felt obliged to [[defend ]] the policy pursued by the Archives—a policy, he argued, seriously misrepresented. It was not, he said a matter of secrecy, but of making [[material ]] available only to scholars and translators who were committed to accuracy: He pointed to the mischief already done by misreadings (not necessarily wilful) of Freud's difficult script, and pointed to the "glaring inaccuracies" in some translations previously published. It is a matter of some importance to read Gay's charges (p. 784f) and Eissler's reply (1993, pp. 202f, 212f) in [[full]], in view of the widespread misunderstandings of the [[position ]] then taken by the Freud Archives.</p>

Eissler-Selke, Ruth; Lehrinstitut der Wiener Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung; [[Leonardo da Vinci ]] and a Memory of his Childhood; New York Psychoanalytic Institute; Pankejeff Sergueï; Sigmund Freud Archives; Tausk, Viktor; War [[neurosis]].

* ——. (1962). Leonardo da Vinci. Psychoanalytic [[notes ]] on the enigma. New York: International Universities Press.

* ——. (1968). Freud's approach to literature — explaining and [[understanding]]. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 23, 141-77.* ——. (1968). Fortinbras and Hamlet. American [[Imago]]: 25, 199-223.

* Gay, Peter (1988). Freud: A [[life ]] for our [[time]]. London and Melbourne: Dent.