Torok, Maria 1926(?)-1998

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TOROK, Maria 1926(?)-1998

PERSONAL: Born c. 1926, in Budapest, Hungary; died of complications from leukemia March 25, 1998, in New York, NY; married Nicholas T. Rand (a university professor). Education: University of Paris, B.S., 1955; Paris Psychoanalytic Society, certificate in psychoanalysis, 1959.

CAREER: Psychoanalyst in private practice in Paris, France, beginning 1959. Author and speaker on psychoanalytic topics, including survival of traumatic events.

WRITINGS:

(With Nicholas Abraham) Cryptonymie: Le verbier de l'homme aux loups, Aubier Flammarion (Paris, France), 1976, translated by Nicholas T. Rand as The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1986.

(With Nicholas Abraham) L'écorce et le noyau, Aubier Flammarion (Paris, France), 1978, translated by Nicholas T. Rand as The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1994.

(Editor, with husband, Nicholas T. Rand) Nicholas Abraham, Rythmes: De l'oeuvre, de la traduction et de la psychanalyse, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1985, translated by Nicholas T. Rand and Benjamin Thigpen as Rhythms: On the Work, Translation, and Psychoanalysis, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1995.

(With Nicholas T. Rand) Questions à Freud: du devinir de la psychanalyse, Archimbaud (Paris, France), 1995, translated by Nicholas T. Rand as Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997.

Un vie avec la psychanalyse, edited by Nicholas T. Rand, Aubier (Paris, France), 2002.

Also author of texts on psychoanalysis in Hungarian.

SIDELIGHTS: Maria Torok was a Paris-based scientist who moved the psychoanalytic movement in new directions with her research, her practice among Holocaust survivors, and her writings on Sigmund Freud. Working with fellow analyst Nicholas Abraham and sometimes with her husband, Nicholas T. Rand, Torok challenged standard Freudian notions of dream interpretation, the Oedipus complex, and the role of trauma in the development of psychiatric disorders. To quote Ford Burkhart in the New York Times, Torok's findings "rejected most of Freud's core ideas." Rather than looking for universal theories that covered all human beings, Torok preferred to focus on the individual and the uniqueness of each case of psychological distress. Her position was particularly popular with feminists.

Torok and Abraham wrote in French, and Torok's husband translated most of her books. Her best known works include The Wolf Man's Magic Word: A Cryptonymy, a study of one of Freud's famous patients, and Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis. In a Journal of Interdisciplinary History review of the latter title, Judith M. Hughes found the book "pretentious in its claim to methodological sophistication and patronizing about the work of others." Conversely, a Publishers Weekly critic praised Questions for Freud for its "reaffirmation of the place of trauma in psychoanalytic theory."

Torok, a native of Hungary, lived briefly in Madison, Wisconsin, but spent most of her life working in France. She died at the New York University Medical Center of complications associated with leukemia. Since her death, her husband has edited another collection of her essays, Un vie avec la psychanalyse.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 1998, Judith M. Hughes, review of Questions for Freud: The Secret History of Psychoanalysis, p. 122.

Publishers Weekly, December 8, 1997, review of Questions for Freud, p. 66.