2002Jan2

Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie

Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis

by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.

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January 2, 2002 - Where Have All Her Diaries Gone?

It is more than unfortunate that Edith Buxbaum's diaries and other writings are not available. It is tragic. Herbert J. Belch, executor of Buxbaum's estate said that after she died young people were hired to clean out her Upland Terrace House. Sadly, most of her papers were thrown out. I have her 1965 diary documenting her trip to Israel and a diary of notes she took on patients; a third diary is extant at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Seattle; but I have been refused access to it. The administrator has said that the diary has not been sanitized. This means that patients' names have not been blackened out. I asked years ago. One would think they might have been sanitized by now.

I believe Buxbaum was more an introspective writer than her materials impart. Her 1965 diary raises important questions about her relationship to America and to Israel, and it discusses Fritz's sadness about Trude [first wife] and the war. She also mentions her childhood friend, Annie Reich

To think that diaries containing such historical and personal material may have neen thrown out makes me sick. All we might have learned about this important woman, her relationship not only to psychoanalysis, world events and the psychoanalytic movement but to her husband and, most important, to herself....

This page was last updated on: July 20, 2005



Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.
			home table of contents


	January 2, 2002 - Where Have All Her Diaries Gone? It is more than unfortunate that Edith Buxbaum's diaries and other writings are not available. It is tragic. Herbert J. Belch, executor of Buxbaum's estate said that after she died young people were hired to clean out her Upland Terrace House. Sadly, most of her papers were thrown out. I have her 1965 diary documenting her trip to Israel and a diary of notes she took on patients; a third diary is extant at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Seattle; but I have been refused access to it. The administrator has said that the diary has not been sanitized. This means that patients' names have not been blackened out. I asked years ago. One would think they might have been sanitized by now. I believe Buxbaum was more an introspective writer than her materials impart. Her 1965 diary raises important questions about her relationship to America and to Israel, and it discusses Fritz's sadness about Trude [first wife] and the war. She also mentions her childhood friend, Annie Reich To think that diaries containing such historical and personal material may have neen thrown out makes me sick. All we might have learned about this important woman, her relationship not only to psychoanalysis, world events and the psychoanalytic movement but to her husband and, most important, to herself.... copyright2005Esther Altshul Helfgott



		This page was last updated on: July 20, 2005