{{short description|Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2013}} thumb|upright|Abraham A. Brill
'''Abraham Arden Brill''' ({{IPA|de-AT|brɪl|lang}}; October 12, 1874 – March 2, 1948) was an Austrian-born American psychiatrist who spent almost his entire adult life in the United States. He was the first psychoanalyst to practice in the United States and the first translator of Sigmund Freud into English.<ref name=mishne>{{cite book|last=Mishne|first=Judith Marks|title=The Evolution and Application of Clinical Theory: Perspective from Four Psychologies|year=1993|publisher=The Free Press|location=NY|page=33|isbn=9780029216354 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bS21abc4GYUC&pg=PA33}}</ref>
==Education== Brill was born in Kańczuga, Austrian Galicia, to Jewish parents. He arrived in the United States alone and penniless at the age of 15. Working continuously to finance his studies,<ref name="P. Gay, Freud 1989 p. 209">P. Gay, ''Freud'' (1989) p. 209</ref> he eventually graduated from New York University in 1901 and obtained his M.D. from Columbia University in 1903.<ref name=nytobit/> Ernest Jones commented with admiration: "He might have been called a rough diamond, but there was no doubt about the diamond".<ref name="P. Gay, Freud 1989 p. 209"/> Brill spent the next four years working at Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island.<ref name=nytobit/>
==Life== Brill married K. Rose Owen, with whom he had two children. He died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on March 2, 1948, at age 73.<ref name=nytobit/>
==Career== After studying with Eugen Bleuler in Zurich, Switzerland,<ref name=mishne/> he met Freud, with whom he maintained a correspondence until Freud's death in 1939.<ref name=mishne/> He returned to the United States in 1908 to become one of the earliest and most active exponents of psychoanalysis, being the first to translate into English most of the major works of Freud, as well as books by Jung. His first translation of Freud appeared in 1909 as ''Some Papers on Hysteria'';<ref name=nytobit>{{cite news|title=Dr. A.A. Brill Dies; Psychiatrist, 73|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/03/03/94939761.pdf|accessdate=March 8, 2013|newspaper=New York Times|date=March 3, 1948}}</ref> and while the quality of his translations might at times be challenged, his overall contribution to the fostering of psychoanalysis in America cannot.<ref>Ernest Jones, ''The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud'' (1964) p. 335-6 and p. 563-4</ref> He campaigned for academic recognition of his field, lectured at Columbia University, and became clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University.<ref name=mishne/> He maintained a psychoanalytic practice as well.
In 1911 he founded the New York Psychoanalytic Society (or Institute) and later helped found the American Psychoanalytic Association.<ref name=mishne/> The library of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute is named in his honor.<ref name=mishne/> Although opposed in principle to lay analysis{{mdash}}"psychoanalysis...can be utilized only by persons who have been trained in anatomy and pathology"<ref>P. Gay, ''Freud'' (1989) p. 495-8</ref>{{mdash}}rather than split the International movement, in 1929 he made a tactical concession to Freud<ref>P. Gay, ''Freud'' (1989) p. 499-500</ref> and, as head of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, sanctioned the limited introduction of lay analysts to the profession, which had previously restricted its ranks to medical professionals.<ref>{{cite book |last=Muckenhoupt |first=Margaret|title=Sigmund Freud: Explorer of the Unconscious|year=1997|publisher=Oxford University Press |location=NY |page=[https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudexpl0000muck/page/133 133]|url=https://archive.org/details/sigmundfreudexpl0000muck|url-access=registration }}</ref> During the 1930s he played a key role in finding employment for psychiatric professionals exiled from Nazi Europe.<ref>{{cite book|last=Friedman|first=Lawrence Jacob |title=Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson|year=1999|publisher=Harvard University Press |page=111 |isbn=9780674004375 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFJvyOpFJtUC&pg=PA111}}</ref>
Once sympathetic to homosexuals, he revised his views and wrote in 1940 that "even so-called classical inverts are not entirely free from some paranoid traits".<ref>{{cite book|last=Terry|first=Jennifer|title=An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society|year=1999|publisher=University of Chicago Press |pages=292–3 |isbn=9780226793665 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qRMJ_d-yUWYC&pg=PA292}}</ref>
Edward Bernays consulted with Brill on the subject of women's smoking and borrowed the term "torches of freedom" from Brill.<ref>{{Citation |title = 1929 Torches of Freedom |publisher = The Museum of Public Relations |url = http://www.prmuseum.com/bernays/bernays_1929.html |accessdate = March 11, 2014 |url-status = dead |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20140715203652/http://www.prmuseum.com/bernays/bernays_1929.html |archivedate = July 15, 2014 |df = mdy-all }}</ref>
One of his last pieces of writing - his preface to Eric Berne's 1947 study, ''The Mind in Action'' - commends Berne's ability to "expound the new psychology without the affectivity of the older Freudians", placing his tribute in the context of himself "having read everything written on Freud and psychoanalysis since I first introduced him here".<ref>Preface, Eric Berne, ''A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis'' (1976) p. 13-4</ref>
== Publications == * ''Psychoanalysis: Its Theories and Practical Application'' (1912) * ''Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis'' (1921)
'''Translations of Freud''' * ''Selected Papers on Hysteria'' (1909) * ''Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex'' (1910) * ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (1913) * ''The Psychopathology of Everyday Life'' (1914) * ''Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses'' (1912) * ''Leonardo da Vinci: A Psychosexual Study of an Infantile Reminiscence'' (1916) * ''Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious'' (1917) * ''Totem and Taboo'' (1919) * ''Studies in Hysteria'' (1937)
'''Translations of Jung''' * ''Psychology of Dementia Praecox'' (1909)
==See also== * Sándor Ferenczi * Otto Rank
== References == {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * {{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/risecrisisofpsyc0000hale/page/n7/mode/2up|last=Hale|first=Nathan G., Jr|title=The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States. Freud and the Americans 1917–1985|location=New York|publisher=Oxford U.P.|year=1995}}
== External links == {{wikisource|works=or}} * {{gutenberg author|id=A.+A.+Brill|name=Abraham Brill}} * {{Librivox author |id=6850}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brill, Abraham Arden}} Category:1874 births Category:1948 deaths Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Category:American psychiatrists Category:Analysands of Sigmund Freud Category:Austrian Jews Category:Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to the United States Category:Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni Category:Jewish psychoanalysts Category:Austrian psychoanalysts Category:Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) Category:New York University alumni Category:New York University faculty Category:People from Przeworsk County Category:People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Category:Translators of Sigmund Freud Category:American psychoanalysts Category:Jewish American medical doctors