Psychoanalysis in exile. On Otto Fenichel's circulars (with an excursus onFenichel and Norbert Elias)

On the basis of a close reading of Fenichel's circulars, the author broadly traces the intellectual and (in part) biographical development undergone ( partly involuntarily) by Fenichel between 1934 (when he started distributin g the circulars) to 1945 (when he discontinued them), i.e. first in Europea n, then (from 1938) in American exile. The author assesses the circulars as the materialization of a magnificently ambitious attempt on Fenichel's par t to achieve a synthesis between psychoanalysis, sociology and history las well as other disciplines). The excursus on Fenichel and Elias underlines t he initial intellectual kinship between these two representatives of "socio logical psychoanalysis" (Fenichel) and "psychoanalytic sociology" (Elias).