Early Women Psychoanalysts: History, Biography, and Contemporary Relevance

Scholar Klara Naszkowska will discuss a new book about the history of women in the early years of psychoanalysis. Each life story is unique, yet each also intertwines with othes, sharing numerous recurring themes, such as gender, Jewishness, women’s education, politics, and migration. Many have been forgotten largely because of the sociopolitical circumstances of the early 20th century, the Second World War, and the Shoah, or are only remembered because of their personal connections to their male partners.
Throughout their lives and their stories are ssues that still hold red-hot relevance in our day: gendered discrimination, antisemitism and other forms of racism, xenophobia, and inhumane immigration laws.

About the Speaker
Klara Naszkowska, Ph.D., is a cultural historian of Jewish women and professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. Her research explores the intersections of gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, immigration status, and age. In the classroom, she encourages students to learn from history by connecting the past events with the current and relevant cultural and sociopolitical topics, themes, and issues. Founding director of the International Association for SpielreinStudies and recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, she is currently a research fellow at Fordham University’s Center for Jewish Studies. In her recently completed research project, Naszkowska investigated a largely overlooked diaspora of Jewish Central-Eastern and Eastern European women psychoanalysts forced to emigrate to the United States between 1930 and 1941. She is currently writing a narrative nonfiction book titled Clara Happel, Judaism, and Psychoanalysis in America: Memory, History, and Interpretation (Routledge Press, 2025).