Psychoanalytic Study Group of Los Angeles (1935 - 1946) | NCP-LA

This Collection comprises documents related to the proceedings and discourses for the activity of the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Los Angeles. The documents are arranged in chronological order. The Collection encompasses original documents of the scientific meetings, executive council meetings, quarterly and annual business meetings, all in all for the Psychoanalytic Study Group of Los Angeles. There is also the number of correlated correspondences with regard to the scientific activity of the given Group.

The beginnings of psychoanalysis in Los Angeles date to an informal study group in the late 1920s. By the mid-1930s a more formal group had been organized under the aegis of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, with Ernst Simmel, originally of Vienna, as the first of a number of highly-regarded European analysts who, once in the United States, migrated to California. The arrival of Otto Fenichel, the eminent analyst and prolific author formerly of Berlin, was another key addition; others included May Romm, Frances Deri, and Hannah Heilborn, whom Fenichel eventually married.