Vienna - Closed down by the Nazis in 1938, a community clinic set up by Sigmund Freud has just re-opened its doors in Vienna, the hometown of the father of psychoanalysis.
The clinic was founded in 1922 and managed by Professor Eduard Hitschmann to treat patients too poor for other options, as well as to give Freud's students a place to practise and patients to treat.
The medical centre was partly destroyed then closed as soon as Hitler marched into Austria in 1936 to annex it as part of the Third Reich. Its collection of specialized books was completely burnt.
"The year 1938 marked the death of psychoanalysis in Austria," Krista clinic was opened Tuesday.
Born in 1856 in Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Freud moved to Vienna in his early years and developed psychoanalysis as a revolutionary approach to the workings of the mind.
He fled the 1938 Nazi Anschluss and went into exile in London, where he died a year later.
Of the 100 or so psychoanalysts working in Vienna at that time, only two remained in the Austrian capital: August Aichhorn, whose son was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, and Alfred von Winterstein.
These two men refounded the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society in 1946, said Placheta.
But she said: "Psychoanalysts were never invited to return to Austria," where the therepeutic method had sparked controversy ever since its first development at the end of the 19th century, notably because of the significance it attached to sexuality.
"Until the 1970s one had the impression that Freud had lived everywhere except Vienna," said Martin Engelberg, an official at the re-opened Vienna clinic.
These days some 180 psychoanalysts practise in Vienna - for the first time, more than the pre-1938 number.
"The aim is to offer a welcoming environment for patients who would not dare come to our surgeries for personality questions of psychic complaints which are too serious," said Engelberg.
About 10 practitioners will work in the clinic's team, which will be able to treat particularly complex cases, he said.
And the clinic has ambitions. "We want to make this institute known internationally in the next 10-15 years," by organizing conferences and other events, said Engelberg.
After the rebirth of the clinic, Vienna is also preparing to honour Freud himself: a major exhibition opens in Vienna next week to mark the 60th anniversary of his death. - Sapa-AFP