[Freud's committee 1912-1914. A contribution to understanding psychoanalytic group affiliation]

With access to new sources the author reconstructs the conditions and circumstances leading in 1912 to what in the literature has come to be known as Freud's "secret committee". Schröter's sociological vantage enables him to pinpoint the mechanisms that made it possible for Freud to seek a resolution of the conflict smouldering between himself and Jung by staging a "palace revolution" which dethroned the institutionalized powerholder (Jung was president of the IPV and editor of the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen) and established the Viennese group-centering around Freud and standing for his interest in the survival of his work-as an informal, secret body wielding power collectively and thus making it unnecessary for Freud himself to take over direct, personal "rule". At the same time, the author contends, the differences between Vienna and Zurich also need to be understood in terms of local and historical factors. Whereas Freud and Vienna represent a monarchic understanding of power in which power may be delegated but is never shared or relinquished, Jung and Zurich stand for democratic, liberal-bourgeois attitude towards power stemming from a long tradition of anti-monarchism in Switzerland.