Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon

Women Psychoanalysts in Greece

Geschichte

Athina Alexandris
Stavroula Beratis
Marie Bonaparte (France)
Frosso Karapanou
Anna Potamianou
Thalia Vergopoulo

Athina Alexandris (1925-2019)

Athina Alexandris was born in Athens, where she studied medicine and specialised in pediatrics at the Children's Hospital Agia Sofia. She completed her residency in psychiatry and child psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. In the 1960s, she was head child psychiatrist at the Albert-Prévost Institute in Montreal. She received her psychoanalytic training at the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis and became a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society.
In the mid-1970s, Athina Alexandris returned to Greece and took part in an attempt to create a Study Group of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) in Greece. After the failure of the negociations with the IPA, she co-founded, along with Panagiotis Sakellaropoulos, Andreas Giannakoulas, Mattheos Iosafats, and Yiannis Tsiantis, the Hellenic Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (ΕΕΨΨ) in 1977, serving as its president.
In 1982, Athina Alexandris, Peter Hartocollis, Panagiotis Sakellaropoulos, Anna Potamianou, and Stavroula Beratis succeeded in establishing a Greek IPA Study Group. In 1997, the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society (Ελληνικη Ψυχαναλυτικη Εταιρεια, EΨE) became a member society of the IPA. Yet in 1987, a split occurred when Alexandris and Sakellaropoulos sought recognition as training analysts without fulfilling the standards of the IPA. Athina Alexandris left the Study Group and continued to train psychiatric professionals as a lecturer and supervisor in collaboration with psychoanalytic and academic institutions such as the ΕΕΨΨ and the Psychiatric Clinic of the Aiginiteio University Hospital.
Most of Athina Alexandris' writings deal with fundamental topics such as guilt, the unconscious, supervision, violence, and the role of presence in psychoanalysis and in life. In her recent book on the various disguises of the death instinct (2015), she developed her thoughts based on Melanie Klein's theory. (Top of the article)



Stavroula Beratis (1942?-2023) h

Stavroula "Avra" Beratis was born in Piraeus. She studied medicine at the University of Athens and specialised in psychiatry and child psychiatry in New York. At the same time, she completed her psychoanalytic training at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and became a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She was an Assistant Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where she collaborated with Fred Pine and Paulina Kernberg.
In the mid-1970s, she returned to Greece. Her husband, Nikolaos "Nikos" Beratis, became a Professor of Pediatrics at the newly founded Medical School of the University of Patras in 1979, and Stavroula Beratis an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry in 1981. She took over the leadership of the Psychiatric Clinic and was a Professor of Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Psychoanalysis at the University of Patras until 2010.
In 1982, Stavroula Beratis, Anna Potamianou, Peter Hartocollis, Athina Alexandris, and Panagiotis Sakellaropoulos created a Greek Study Group of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). In 1997, the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society (Ελληνικη Ψυχαναλυτικη Εταιρεια, ΕΨΕ) became a member society of the IPA.
Stavroula Beratis was a training analyst, supervisor, and president of the ΕΨΕ. Her scientific publications focused on topics such as the psychological problems of children with thalassemia (Mediterranean anemia), suicide and suicide attempts among Greek adolescents, depression, and early symptoms of schizophrenia. (Top of the article)



Frosso Karapanou (1909-2002)

Frosso Karapanou (Carapanou, Carapanos) was born in Alexandria, Egypt, as the daughter of mining engineer Gerasimos Karapanos and his wife Hermine Mavrommatis. She attended a convent school before moving to Athens in 1928, where she worked at the National Bank of Greece. Her marriage to Dimitris Protekdikos, one of the bank's directors, ended in divorce in 1945. Her interest in psychoanalysis led her to an analysis with Andreas Embirikos, the Greek pioneer of psychoanalysis, in the years of 1943 to 1947.
For further training in psychoanalysis, she left for Paris and started a second analysis with René Laforgue. Simultaneously, she studied psychology at the Sorbonne from 1947 to 1949 and attended the child analytic seminars conducted by Françoise Dolto. In 1950, she went to Geneva, in order to obtain her diploma as kindergarten teacher. She studied psychology under Jean Piaget, and specialised in child psychopathology. Back in Athens, she ran the first psychoanalytically oriented kindergarten in Greece from 1955 to 1958.
From 1956, Frosso Karapanou worked at the Centre of Mental Health and Research (CMHR) in Athens, founded by Anna Potamianou the same year. In 1965, she became head of a specialised unit of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. To continue her psychoanalytic training, she frequently traveled to Paris, participated in seminars of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP), and had supervision with Serge Lebovici and André Green.
After the putsch of the junta, she moved to Paris in 1969. Supervised by Georges Devereux, she graduated as a PhD with an ethno psychiatric study on obesity in 1975. In 1968 she applied to the Institute of the SPP to be accepted as a candidate and thus finish her training. The SPP, however, insisted upon a new analysis, which she underwent with Denise Braunschweig in the years of 1969 to 1973. Family reasons forced her to return to Athens in 1973. In 1983 she finally became a member of the Hellenic Psychoanalytic Study Group, founded in 1982 and recognised that same year by the International Psychoanalytical Association. (Top of the article)



Anna Potamianou née Pipineli (1926-2021)

Anna Pipineli-Potamianou, born in Piraeus, was married to Charalambos Potamianos (1906-2009), Greek officer and private secretary of King Paul of Greece. She studied philosophy and archaeology at the University of Athens and psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. In Paris she collaborated with Serge Lebovici and René Diatkine at the Hôpital des Enfants malades. Inspired by their social-psychiatric reforms, Anna Potamianou founded in 1956 the Centre of Mental Health and Research (CMHR) [Κέντρο Ψυχικής Υγιεινής και Ερευνών] in Athens, the first official effort to implement psychiatric reformation in Greece. Serving as its director, she was supported by supervisions and seminars from Lebovici and Diatkine. In 1958 Anna Potamianou graduated with a PhD thesis on the causes of anti-social behaviour.
Following the military coup in 1967, the CMHR was placed under state supervision. Anna Potamianou resigned and went back to Paris. After a five-year analysis in Athens with Demetrios Kouretas, a pioneer of psychoanalysis in Greece, she underwent a second analysis in Paris with Catherine Parat. She completed her psychoanalytic training at the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) and became a member in 1974 and a training analyst in 1980. She also trained in child analysis at the Centre de Formation et de Perfectionnement de Psychothérapeutes and in psychosomatics at the Paris Institute of Psychosomatics (IPSO-Pierre Marty).
After the fall of the Junta in 1974, she returned to Greece and resumed her position as director of the CMHR until 1978. In 1982, Anna Potamianou, Peter Hartocollis, Athina Alexandris, Panagiotis Sakellaropoulos, and Stavroula Beratis created a Greek Study Group of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). In 1997, the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society (Ελληνικη Ψυχαναλυτικη Εταιρεια, ΕΨΕ) became a member society of the IPA. Anna Potamianou had been a training analyst since 1980 and served as president of ΕΨΕ from 1998 to 2002. From 2005 to 2009, she belonged to the IPA board. In addition to her work as a practicing psychoanalyst, she taught at Panteion University in Athens.
Anna Potamianou was a member of the IPSO-Pierre Marty and the Association Internationale de Psychosomatique Pierre Marty (AIPPM). Psychosomatic topics are also a focus of her publications. In her 2013 essay "Destins et carillons de la culpabilité," she examined the involvement of guilt in somatic processes and diseases. Her book "Hope. A Shield in the Economy of Borderline States" received special attention, in which she described, using case studies, literary examples, and myths, how borderline patients use reality-denying hope as a defense against change and to maintain feelings of omnipotence. (Top of the article)



Thalia Vergopoulo (1930-2007)

Thalia Leonidis-Vergopoulo was born into the Greek community in Cairo as the daughter of wealthy cotton merchants. She attended the Achillopouleio Girls' School in Cairo before leaving Egypt. In 1950, she began her psychology studies with Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva. Later, she trained in group analysis with S. H. Foulkes and Wilfred Ruprecht Bion in London. In 1964, she went to the USA for a study visit at the Department of Psychology at Loyola University in Chicago.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Thalia Vergopoulo lived in Athens. Alongside her private practice as a psychotherapist, she worked as a psychologist at the Psychological Laboratory of the Attica Daphni Psychiatric Hospital, at the Athenian Institute of Anthropos, and at the Moraitis School. During the military dictatorship, she was active in the resistance and was arrested. However, she managed to leave Greece and emigrate to Switzerland in 1968.
In Switzerland, Thalia Vergopoulo worked with Jean Piaget at the Centre International d’Épistémologie Génétique in Geneva. She taught at the University of Geneva, from 1968 to 1971 at the Institut des sciences de l'éducation (ISE) and from 1974 to 1978 at the Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation (FPSE). At the same time, she completed psychoanalytic training with the Société Suisse de Psychanalyse (SSPsa) and became a member and training analyst of the SSPsa. She taught at the Centre de Psychanalyse Raymond de Saussure and practiced as a psychoanalyst in Geneva from 1975 to 1995.
In 1996, Thalia Vergopoulo returned to Greece and became a training analyst of the Hellenic Psychoanalytical Society (Ελληνικη Ψυχαναλυτικη Εταιρεια, EΨE), where she served as vice president from 2002 to 2005. She was particularly committed to promoting Bion's ideas and organised international seminars and conferences on his work. (Artikelanfang)


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