In memory of Eglé Laufer (1925–2021)

Eglé Laufer was born in Vienna in 1925 and passed away in London in 2021. She was a Distinguished Fellow of the British Psychoanalytic Society and Founder and President of the Brent Centre for Young People. Eglé had moved to London with her mother and her stepfather when she was seven years old; her mother was a child psychiatrist and her stepfather a mathematician. Eglé initially gained a degree in mathematics and physics but later decided to train as a psychoanalyst. I had the chance to enjoy a nearly fifty-year-long affectionate relationship with Eglé. It started with my first visit in 1973 to the Brent Centre for Young People in London, which she had founded a few years before with her husband, Moses Laufer, and a few other psychoanalysts committed to treating severely ill adolescent patients. This visit was the beginning of my ongoing relationship with both Eglé and Moses Laufer although, after 1999, when Moe’s health deteriorated so badly, we had to go on with two instead of three. The Laufers visited my psychiatric outpatient clinic for adolescents in Geneva many, many times. As they were involved in the training programme in child, adolescent and adult psychiatry, generations of trainees are indebted to them for their unique teaching and still feel grateful today for all that they have learned. Before focusing on adolescence, Eglé started her professional experience with adult patients, mainly female patients, postpartum psychosis and the prevention of breakdown. Like her I was trained as an adult psychoanalyst and not as a child psychoanalyst, as Moses Laufer was. Over the years, Eglé remained deeply interested in femininity, the development of female sexuality and masturbation in female adolescents. However, most of her scientific work is a joint venture with her husband, i.e. with a double authorship: Eglé andMoses Laufer. Everywhere in the world, for all those concerned with ill adolescents and adolescent psychopathology, reference will be made to the Laufers. Their input is theoretical – they offer an understanding of adolescent psychopathology which did not exist before – and practical: once a psychoanalyst has concluded that a developmental disorder is present in a given adolescent, the analyst cannot remain “neutral”; instead they have to be clear regarding the risks for the future and the need for treatment. The originality of the work of Eglé and Moses Laufer comes from the fact that they no longer refer to the psychiatric nosography used for adult patients. Adolescent psychopathology is expressed in terms of developmental breakdown, deadlock and foreclosure (Laufer and Laufer 1984). In their model, the body has a central and specific place and the development is normal or pathological; the psychopathology expresses itself mainly through the body, which is the privileged target of the destructiveness, temporarily preventing attacks on thought. From this perspective, I find it interesting that quite a few adult psychoanalysts working in psychosomatics today wonder if the starting point of their patients’ psychosomatic illness was a breakdown in adolescence, which remained “masked” or “pending” until adulthood.