Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (1889–1957)
Frieda Fromm Reichmann ( Reichmann; October 23, 1889 in Karlsruhe, Germany – April 28, 1957 in Rockville, Maryland) was a German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud who immigrated to America during World War II. She was a pioneer for women in science, specifically within psychology and the treatment of schizophrenia. She is known for coining the now widely debunked term Schizophrenogenic mother. In 1948, she wrote "the schizophrenic is painfully distrustful and resentful of other people, due to the severe early warp and rejection he encountered in important people of his infancy and childhood, as a rule, mainly in a schizophrenogenic mother".

Fromm Reichmann was born to Adolf and Klara Reichmann in Karlsruhe, German Empire in 1889. She was raised in a middle class Orthodox Jewish family and was the oldest of three daughters; her sisters were Grete and Anna. She came from a large, supportive and impactful family. Her paternal great grandfather had 93 grandchildren and her extended family played an important role in her life. Her mother was part of a group that established a preparatory school for girls in 1908 to prepare them for university because girls were not permitted to attend Gymnasium. One of her aunts was instrumental in the establishment of kindergartens in Germany and one of her uncles, who owned the bank her father worked at, financed Frieda's college education. Her mother and father developed significant deafness, which Frieda would later develop as well. Due to the stresses of this impairment and the impending end of his career, Adolf died by suicide in 1925. At age 36, Frieda began an affair with her patient, Erich Seligmann Fromm (1900 1980), who was a student of psychoanalysis and social psychology. They met at Weißer Hirsch sanatorium where Frieda analyzed Erich as part of his training. Once they fell in love, she stopped analyzing him and they married in 1926 (one year after her father's death). Erich developed tuberculosis, which Frieda believed was a physiological expression of psychological distress. The couple agreed that Erich would move to Switzerland to undergo specialized treatment and to live apart. However, after Erich immigrated into the United States of America in 1933, he sponsored her affidavit to flee Germany after Nazi occupation in 1934. They officially divorced in 1942. Frieda never remarried and never had biological children. Despite having no biological children, Frieda served as a "mother" figure to her patients, friends, and family. During World War II, she financially supported more than a dozen family and friends, and advocated for their safe escape from persecution by the Nazis. Although she pleaded with her sisters and mother to also emigrate to the United States, they remained in England and Palestine. She developed deep meaningful friendships with colleagues Gertrud Jacob and Hilde Bruch, loved to play piano and listen to classical music, and dote on her beloved cocker spaniels. When Gertrud Jacob fell ill also with tuberculosis, Frieda moved with her to Santa Fe, New Mexico to seek specialized treatment. Jacob died during surgery while Frieda was back in Rockville, MD. Every summer after, Frieda spent two months at her home in Santa Fe. She had hereditary deafness and died from a heart attack in 1957 at her home at the Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. Her home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2021, in recognition of her influence in the development of interpersonal psychoanalysis in the mid 20th century.