Berman, Anne (1889-1979)

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BERMAN, ANNE (1889-1979)

Anne Berman, a French pharmacist, was the personal secretary of Marie Bonaparte and a translator of psychoanalytical works. She was born March 23, 1889, and died April 25, 1979. After her dissertation, "La Famille des Boraginacées" (The Family of Boraginaceae), was completed, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Toulouse at the Sainte-Anne hospital until 1924. That year the Souffron pharmacy on 54, rue de Miromesnil went up for sale. She bought the pharmacy, where she worked for several years. She was a pharmacist delegate to the Chambre Syndicale and, on May 22, 1928, was accepted as a member of the Soroptimists, an organization founded in California in 1921 with the goal of recruiting women who excelled in their profession.

After undergoing analysis with Marie Bonaparte, she became her secretary. She was accepted as the first member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society on January 10, 1927. She administered the secretariat of the Institut de Psychanalyse (Psychoanalysis Institute) from its inception in 1934.

She translated several of Freud's work including Psychoanalytic Procedure, An Outline of Psychoanalysis, the first two volumes of Ernest Jones's Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanism 's of Defense, andThe Birth of Psychoanalysis, Letters to Wilhelm Fliess.

At the time of Berman's death, Serge Lebovici wrote, in the Revue française de psychanalyse : "A tireless reader, a musician who was especially fond of Wagner, Annette remained a close friend of the psychoanalysts of her generation and was able, because of this, to contribute to a history of the birth of psychoanalysis in France. In spite of her discretion, we will remember her as among those who did the most to spread the knowledge of Freud's work in France."

Jean-Pierre Bourgeron

See also: Bonaparte, Marie Léon; Borel, Adrien Alphonse Alcide; France; Revue française de psychanalyse ; Société psychanalytique de Paris and Institut de psychanalyse de Paris.