EARLY WOMEN PSYCHOANALYSTS
Welcome to a website dedicated to the remarkable yet inadequately remembered, overlooked, and erased women pioneers of psychoanalysis born before World War I, most of them Jewish.
Despite their substantial contributions to psychoanalytic thought, theory, and clinical practice, their work has often been devalued, marginalized, or written out of the canon through intersecting gendered and racial forms of power, institutional practices, and historical narratives that defined whose narratives counted, and why – and whose did not.
This site highlights courses, publications, and events that honor and critically engage with their legacy. Join us in uncovering the stories of these women who shaped the field of psychoanalysis and continue to inspire future generations. Together, let’s restore their voices and contributions to the historical record and carry them forward for the future generations.
Book monographs & anthologies
Klara Naszkowska (Ed.) Early Women Psychoanalysts. History, Biography, and Contemporary Relevance. Routledge, 2024
National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis NAAP 2025 Gradiva® Award for Best Historical Edited Book
Review by Rosemary Balsam, American Imago, 2025.
Review by Fatima Caropreso, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 2025.
Chapters:
Ch. 1: Sabina Spielrein: Pioneer of Medical Science by Ana Tomčić and John Launer
Ch. 2: Lou Andreas-Salomé: An Unacknowledged Psychoanalytic Theorist of Art by Shira Dushy-Barr
Ch. 3: Beata “Tola” Rank: Out from the Footnote by Lena Magnone
Ch. 4: Margarethe Hilferding: Women’s Rights Activist Ahead of Her Time by Candice Dumas
Ch. 5: What Do We Know about Tatiana Rosenthal? An Interview with Leon Kadis by Pamela Cooper-White & Leonid Kadis
Ch. 6: Erzsébet Farkas: An Unknown Heroine and Her Wartime Mission in a Jewish Foster Home by Dóra Szabó
Ch. 7: Ludwika Karpińska-Woyczyńska: The Forgotten First Female Freudian by Edyta Dembińska & Krzysztof Rutkowski
Ch. 8: Nic Waal: Speaking in Tongues by Håvard Friis Nilsen
Ch. 9: Barbara Low: “The little bit of pioneering” or the Beginnings of British Psychoanalysis by Richard Theisen Simanke
Ch. 10: Vilma Kovács and the Community of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis by Anna Borgos
Ch. 11: Eugenia Sokolnicka and Sophie Morgenstern: The Intertwining of Life, Work, and Death by Ursula Prameshuber
Ch. 12: Thinking Cure: Jewish Psychoanalyst Alberta Szalita, from Warsaw to New York by Ewa Kobylińska-Dehe
Ch 13: Olga Wermer: From Galician Archives to Memory and Postmemory by Klara Naszkowska
Elena Bravo Ceniceros, Las primeras psicoanalistas: una genealogía del psicoanálisis (The First Women Psychoanalysts: A Genealogy of Psychoanalysis). Vol I: A-F. Ediciones Navarra, 2026
Fátima Caropreso & Renata Udler Cromberg, Mulheres pioneiras da psicanálise: uma antologia (1904-1940) (Women Pioneers of Psychoanalysis: An Anthology (1904-1940)). Autêntica, 2025
Key women analysis explored include: Lou Andreas-Salomé, Emma Eckstein, Margarethe Hilferding, Karen Horney, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, Karen Horney, Ruth Mack Brunswick, Barbara Low, Eugenia Sokolnicka, and Sabina Spielrein
Lena Magnone, Freud's Emissaries: The Transfer of Psychoanalysis Through the Polish Intelligentsia to Europe 1900-1939, Vol. 1-2, Sdvig Press, 2023
Lena Magnone, Emisariusze Freuda: Transfer kulturowy psychoanalizy do polskich sfer inteligenckich przed drugą wojną światową, tomy 1-2. Universitas, 2016
Key women analysis explored include: Berta Bornstein, Stephanie (Steff) Bornstein, Helene Deutsch, Mira Gincburg-Oberholzer, Beata Rank, Eugenia Sokolnicka
Anna Borgos, Women in the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis: Girls of Tomorrow. Routledge, 2021
Key women analysis explored include: Alice Bálint, Therese Benedek, Margit Dubovitz, Edit Gyömrői, Lilly Hajdu, Fanny Hann-Kende, Alice Hermann, Erzsébet Kardos, Vilma Kovács, Klára Lázár, Kata Lévy, Lillián Rotter
