Background
Abraham Arden Brill was born in Kanczuga, Austria, Oct. 12, 1874. Brill came to the United States as a youth. Son of Philip and Esther Brill.
Abraham Arden Brill was born in Kanczuga, Austria, Oct. 12, 1874. Brill came to the United States as a youth. Son of Philip and Esther Brill.
Abraham Arden Brill worked to support himself through high school and college, graduating from New York University in 1901. He received an MD degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in 1904.
In 1909 he attended the Clark University Conference, traveling with Freud's party from New York.
Brill spent 4 years working at Central Islip State Hospital on Long Island. From 1902 to 1907, he traveled in Europe, first to Paris and then, at the suggestion of Frederick Peterson, to Zürich; there he learned about Freud's new science, psychoanalysis, from the staff of the Burgholzi Psychiatric Clinic (which included Eugen Bleuler and Carl Jung).
From that time to the close of the First World War the New York Psychoanalytic Society was kept alive, practically single handedly, by Brill. His The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud was published in 1938.
Abraham Arden Brill's importance to psychoanalysis was also as a leader of both psychoanalytic and psychiatric institutions. He served as president of the APA in 1919 and 1920 and again from 1929 to 1935.
He was president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society from 1911 to 1913 and from 1925 to 1936.
His influence on psychoanalysts both in New York and the United States was at its zenith between 1929 to 1936.
During this period he played a central role in restricting membership in the New York Society and in the APA to physicians.
He remained a proud and respected figure who more than any other psychoanalyst was responsible for the growth of psychoanalysis in the United States.
Brill worked as a psychiatrist in the New York State Mental Hospital System at the Central Islip State Hospital under the tutelage of Adolph Meyer and August Hoch.
Abraham Arden Brill was married to K. Rose Owen, May 21, 1908. He had two children, Gioia Bernheim, Edmund.