Francis Clark-Lowes Wilhelm Stekel’s Journalistic Achievement, 1901-1914: The Challenge to Therapeutic Nihilism Wilhelm Stekel (1868-1940) was among the first followers of Freud. He founded the Psychological Wednesday Society 1 and played an extremely prominent part in this, as well as in its successor, the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. However, in 1912, like Alfred Adler before him and Carl Gustav Jung after him, he separated from Freud. As well as being a medical doctor, Stekel was also a journalist. On this subject the acclaimed biographer of Freud, Ernest Jones, commented: The truth was that Stekel, who was a fluent if careless writer, was a born journalist in a pejorative sense, someone to whom the effect produced was much more important than the verities communicated, and indeed he earned part of his living by writing regular feuilletons for the local press. 2 Historians of the psychoanalytical movement, influenced no doubt by Jones’s view, and by Freud’s known hostility to Stekel following their separation, have paid little attention to this journalistic work. Their only interest seems to have been in a remark made by Jones: “Stekel used to report its [the Psychological Wednesday Society’s] discussions every week in the Sunday edition of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt [New Viennese Daily].” 3 Previous research has until the present uncovered only two such reports, both in fictionalised form, but I will show below that there are a number of additional clear references to the proceedings of the Society; it may furthermore be guessed that some of the topics of his other articles, not only in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt, were the subjects discussed at meetings. A contrary different view of Stekel’s journalistic work is contained in Fritz Wittels’s unauthorised biography of Freud [translations follow the German text in this and following citations]: Stekel, seit 1912 von Freud geächtet, hat in jüngeren Jahren durch seine journalistische Begabung viel zur Verbreitung der Freudschen Lehren in Wien und ganz Deutschland beigetragen. Die Rotationsmaschinen aller deutschen Tageszeitungen stöhnten unter seinen Lobeshymnen. Freud hätte sich zweifellos auch ohne solche Propaganda durchgesetzt. Das mindert aber nicht Stekel’s frühe Verdienste um Freud, als es noch nicht so bequem war wie heute, sich zur Psychoanalyse zu bekennen. 4 1 In a letter to Stekel dated 4.2.1904 Freud included the phrase “die von Ihnen gegründete Psychologische Gesellschaft [The Psychological Society founded by you”. This is held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress (B19). 2 Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud; Life and Work, Vol 2: Years of Maturity, 1901-1919 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955), 152. A feuilleton was a newspaper article devoted to commentary, usually on a non-political subject, or to fiction, often serialised. 3 Ibid. 9 4 Fritz Wittels, Sigmund Freud; der Mann, die Lehre, die Schule (Leipzig, Wien, Zürich, E.P.Tal, 1924) 116. Appeared in English as Sigmund Freud; His Personality, His Teaching and His School , London, Allen & Unwin, 1924; New York, Dodd, Mead, 1924. 1