Robert C. Bak (born Bak Róbert; 14 October 1908, Budapest – 15 September 1974, New York City) was a Hungarian-born psychoanalyst who moved to the United States in 1941, and eventually became President of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
Training and career Bak underwent a training analysis with Imre Hermann and joined the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Society in 1938, only to be forced to flee to the United States a few years later, where he became a training analyst in 1947, and president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1957.J. Meszaros, Ferenczi and Beyond (2014) p. 162–164
He published some 25 articles in Hungarian, German, and English. From the start, Bak was concerned to chart early object relations, and their distortions:Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 437 and 595 he saw the sexual perversions as attempts to undo object separation,S. Taylor, Hans Bellmer (2002) p. 187 and also charted the emergence of grandiosity in ego-regression.Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 421 and 595
Bak also reiterated the importance of the idea of the phallic mother in the perverse denial of castration.E. Becker, The Denial of Death (2007) p. 224
Characteristics Bak was described as a lover of the good life,W. S. Poland, Meeting the Darkness (1996) p. 176 he experienced difficulties in his marriage and had no children.J. Meszaros, Ferenczi and Beyond (2014) p. 20
When asked whether or not he would describe as transference a relationship in which each party saw the other through a veil of unconscious fantasy, instead of as they were, he is said to have replied ironically, "I'd call that life".Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (1988) p. 76
Selected writings 'Dissolution of the Ego, Mannerism and Delusion of Grandeur' Journal of Nervous and Medical Disease XCVIII (1943) 'The Phallic Woman' Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 23 (1968)
See also
References
External links Bak, Robert C. on encyclopedia.com