Sandor Rado, Addiction Expert
Sandor Rado is remembered as one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis, but also as one of its reformers. He has always been known to be an excellent polemicist. Intellectually he was particularly brilliant, and this, coupled with his ability to argue, gave him great notoriety within the psychoanalytic movement and even beyond.
Other less notable aspects of his personality have also become well known. He was a lover of good food and an irremediable seducer, in love and eager to conquer the women who crossed his path. That, combined with an exaggerated thesis on phallocentrism, gave it a misogynistic reputation. It might be overkill, but in the end, he wasn’t really a feminist.
For all these reasons, Sandor Rado is the protagonist of a long and intense controversy with psychoanalyst Karen Horney. And although in principle he was one of Freud’s most fanatical followers, sooner or later he took a new path far removed from classical psychoanalysis.
Sandor Rado, a remarkable student
Sandor Rado was born in Hungary in 1890. He was inclined to study law and in 1911 obtained a degree in political science. Later, and contrary to his father’s wishes, he decided to study medicine. It is his great passion: from an early age, he is a big fan of the natural sciences. He obtained his doctorate in 1915.
He has already come into contact with psychoanalytic doctrine. At the age of 19, he found a writing by Sandor Ferenczi that dazzled him. From then on, he began to take an interest in the ideas of Sigmund Freud. He even personally went to Vienna to hear a lecture from the father of psychoanalysis and came away fascinated. Since then, a friendship has been forged between him and Freud which will last more than 15 years.
In Hungary, with Ferenczi, he founded the Hungarian Society of Psychoanalysis. It is then analyzed by Erzsebet Revesz who in turn is psychoanalyzed by Freud. Sandor Rado is married, but in the process he falls in love with his analyst. He divorces his first wife and marries his analyst.
The psychoanalytic movement
In 1922, Sandor Rado moved to Berlin and carried out a second psychoanalysis there, this time with Karl Abraham. He was quickly invited to join the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin. In 1924, Sigmund Freud himself asked him to be the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis International Zeitschrift Fûr Psicoloanalyse. Three years later, he also became the editor-in-chief of the famous magazine Imago.
During his stay in Berlin, he also became the trainer of new psychoanalysts. Important personalities like Wilhelm Reich, Otto Fenichel and Heinz Hartmann do didactic psychoanalysis with him.
In addition, his family situation becomes very complex. His wife, 6 months pregnant, fell into pernicious anemia. He decides to initiate a cesarean which will result in the death of his wife two days later. The baby will die a week later.
After this difficult event, Sandor Rado has a stormy and ephemeral relationship with the psychoanalyst Hélène Deutsch. Then he finally falls in love and marries one of his patients, Emmy. This is why Rado is considered one of the most unique cases of transgression in psychoanalysis, because during his life he married his analyst and then one of his patients.
A divergent path
In 1931, Sandor Rado moved to the United States. He was invited by Abraham Arden Brill to create the Institute of the Psychoanalytic Society of New York in the image of the institute which operated in Berlin. When the Nazis come to power, Rado helps his colleagues migrate to the new continent.
At this point, he begins to distance himself from classical psychoanalysis. He is in favor of a very close integration of medicine and psychoanalysis. He begins to give much more importance to biological phenomena than to experiences of the unconscious. Rado then studies addictions and quickly becomes one of the great authorities on these issues.
He eventually adopts behavioral principles with emotional rehabilitation as the center of treatment. In 1942, he created the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine. He later founded the New York School of Psychiatry, an institution that has virtually nothing to do with psychoanalysis. Rado died in 1972, after becoming one of the most famous psychiatrists in the United States.
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