Abraham Brill

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1874-1948

The American psychiatrist Abraham Brill was born on October 12, 1874, in Kanczugv, Austria (then Galicia) and died on March 2, 1948, in New York City.

His father was a noncommissioned officer in the Austrian Army who served with Maximilian in Mexico. After spending his childhood in Austria, Brill emmigrated to the United States in 1889 at age fifteen, without his family and with almost no money. He worked to support himself through high school and college, graduating from New York University in 1901. He received an MD degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in 1904.

Brill worked as a psychiatrist in the New York State Mental Hospital System at the Central Islip State Hospital under the tutelage of Adolph Meyer and August Hoch. From 1902 to 1907, he traveled in Europe, first to Paris and then, at the suggestion of Frederick Peterson, to Zürich; there he learned about Freud's new science, psychoanalysis, from the staff of the Burgholzi Psychiatric Clinic (which included Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung). He returned to America a year later and accepted a position as assistant physician of mental disease, Bellevue Hospital, which he held until 1911. In 1909 he attended the Clark University Conference, traveling with Freud's party from New York. He became the first practicing psychoanalyst in America and interested a small group of New York psychiatrists in psychoanalytic ideas.

In 1911, Sigmund Freud urged Ernest Jones to establish the American Psychoanalytic Association (APA) with James Jackson Putnam as president, and Brill as secretary. Brill refused to participate and instead, on February 12, 1911, with fifteen other physicians, founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society, several months before the APA was established in May of that year. From that time to the close of the First World War the New York Psychoanalytic Society was kept alive, practically single handedly, by Brill. He was the expositor and public advocate of psychoanalysis par excellence. He spoke at medical, neurological, and psychiatric societies, and to lay groups as well. He lectured to social workers, the New York City Police College, the Education Department of NYU—many of these lectures were reprinted in professional journals and lay publications. During the 1930s he presented a weekly radio broadcast lecture on mental health themes.

Of greatest importance for the dissemination and promulgation of psychoanalytic ideas in America were Brill's translations. Brill translated into English the major work of Sigmund Freud, some of Carl Gustav Jung's works, and Bleuler's Textbook of Psychiatry. His own publications included numerous journal articles and important books, including Psychoanalysis (1921). His The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud was published in 1938.

Abraham Arden Brill's importance to psychoanalysis was also as a leader of both psychoanalytic and psychiatric institutions. Brill became a member of the APA in 1914. He served as president of the APA in 1919 and 1920 and again from 1929 to 1935. He was president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society from 1911 to 1913 and from 1925 to 1936. His influence on psychoanalysts both in New York and the United States was at its zenith between 1929 to 1936. During this period he played a central role in restricting membership in the New York Society and in the APA to physicians. He defied Freud, who was supportive of lay analysis, because of his concern about "quackery," medical treatment by poorly trained or unauthorized practitioners. It was Brill's conviction that the survival of psychoanalysis in the United States depended on maintaining its medical identity.

Brill also played an important role in achieving autonomy for the APA within the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). These organizational and credential principles were maintained until overturned by the settlement of a lawsuit brought against the IPA, the New York and Columbia Psychoanalytic Institutes, and APA by a group of psychologists in the 1980s. From the years immediately preceding World War II and until his death in 1948, Brill was displaced first by the Americans Bertram Lewin and Lawrence Kubie, and then by the Viennese psychoanalysts who emigrated to New York to escape Nazi persecution. However, he remained a proud and respected figure who more than any other psychoanalyst was responsible for the growth of psychoanalysis in the United States.

Bibliography

Hale, Nathan G., Jr. (1995). The rise and crisis of psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans 1917-1985. New York: Oxford University Press.

—ARNOLD D. RICHARDS

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Abraham A. Brill, New York Times' illustration (2 March 1913): "Dreams of the Insane Help Greatly in their Cure" .

Abraham Arden Brill (October 12, 1874, Kańczuga, Austrian Galicia – March 2, 1948, New York City) was an Austrian psychiatrist. He was born in Austria, and graduated from New York University, in 1901, M.D. Columbia University, 1903. He arrived in the United States alone at the age of 15.

After studies with C. G. Jung in Zurich, Switzerland, he returned to the United States in 1908 to become one of the earliest and most active exponents of psychoanalysis, being the first to translate into English most of the major works of Freud as well as books by Jung. He taught at New York University and Columbia and was a practising psychoanalyst.

Brill consulted with E. L. Bernays on the subject of women's smoking. He described cigarettes as "Torches of Freedom" to women, a theme which Bernays exploited. Working for the American Tobacco Company, on March 31, 1929, Bernays sent a group of young models to march in the New York City Easter Parade. He then advised the press that a group of debutant marchers would light "torches of freedom" to signal their independence from male domination. On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers, thus helping to break the taboo against women smoking. He is also famous for bringing the Freudian thought process to America. Brill also translated some of Freud's books to English starting in 1909.

Publications include

• Psychoanalysis: Its Theories and Practical Application (1912)
• Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis (1921)
• The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, translated by A.A. Brill, first published 1913; new edition based on 1915 revisions of 3rd ed. (1911). Intro and notes by Daniel T. O'Hara & Gina Masucci MacKenzie, NY: Barnes & Noble, 2005.
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud, translated by A. A. Brill.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Abraham Arden Brill

Psychiatry portal

• Works by Abraham Brill at Project Gutenberg

See also: Brill (disambiguation)

Persondata
Name	Brill, Abraham Arden
Alternative names
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Date of birth	October 12, 1874
Place of birth
Date of death	March 2, 1948
Place of death

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