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Heresy: Sandor Rado and the Psychoanalytic Movement, by Paul Roazen and Bluma Swerdloff, Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995, 219 pp.
The readership of this little gem of a psychoanalyst's oral history could be limited to historians of a particular era of psychoanalysis and to those interested in Sandor Rado as the founder of the Columbia Clinic for Psychoanalytic and Psychosomatic Training and Research. However, for most of today's psychoanalysts his is a barely recognized name. On the jacket of the book, Robert Michels, a Columbia graduate, expresses his appreciation for "bringing Rado back to life, and having captured the excitement that his life generated for others. [Rado] often seemed larger than life, and he was far more likely to elicit love or hate than indifference. His ideas, his criticisms, and his personality have had a lasting impact on psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts." Roger MacKinnon, a student of Rado's, comments, "It is amazing how little even those of us who were personally trained by Rado knew about his illustrious pre-Columbia career."
Sandor Rado (1890-1972) was indeed an important yet relatively neglected figure in the history of psychoanalysis. In the course of preparing a book about Ruth Easser, one of Sandor Rado's first Columbia graduates, I interviewed over 30 of Rado's colleagues and Columbia students and came to know something about how those who were influenced by him regarded this man.
Why is so little generally known of this man who played a central role in the history of psychoanalysis? A confidant of Ferenzi's, he shared the first reading of Freud's early manuscripts. An analysand of Abraham's, he was present at the founding of the first psychoanalytic institute in Berlin. Having a photographic memory, he was one of the early teachers of Freudian theory, and he organized the first psychoanalytic curriculum, and then, regarded as a major exponent of Freud, was recruited to organize the training program at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. His intellectual abilities led Freud to handpick him to be the editor of the Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, which was moved to Berlin for Rado's benefit. From 1924 until he left for New York in 1931, he was the sole executive editor-the one who did the work-as recognized in a letter by Freud, "to you...