In many ways, the present day in Los Angeles feels unprecedented, frightening and isolating. In reality, Los Angeles has seen division and atrocity not only throughout its long history, but as a primary thread in the tapestry that binds its identity. The history of the city of Los Angeles extends back 19,000 years of Native history, an entire epoch of colonial and post-colonial Spanish influence, California’s pertinence to both Mexico and its own independent republic and even much of the history of the Anglo-colonial expansion and even the lauded gold rush. Even before that time, it was situated on both sides of the ever-present San-Andreas Fault.
This piece will focus on a very brief sliver of that history, a piece that overlaps with the introduction of a largescale immigration of both people and ideas. This time served to situate the modern city as it is and helps the reader understand how WILA came to be, and how Los Angeles came to be where it is today – a city split and divided in its identity.
Early Immigration
During the period between 1900 and 1930 the population of people of Mexican descent in California went from 8,000 – 368,013. Most of that occurred after 1920. The decades between 1920 to 1960 were a pivotal time in defining the modern city of Los Angeles and they way it plays host to people of Mexican descent – a story very much being written to this day (McWilliams, 1946).
In the boom years of the 1920’s, oil was a primary draw for Los Angeles, as well as film. This estuary of peoples would become too large, sprawling and diverse to host a unified culture. There would be no singular or unifying Los Angeles (Krist, 2018).
Indeed, the two parallel dimensions of Los Angeles at this time, one of European immigration and one of Mexican immigration seemingly existed as split pieces of the L.A. gestalt. At that time Psychoanalysis was just beginning to trickle in to the city in the form of study groups reading Freud’s newest works.
Mexican identities had always been pivotal for Los Angeles. But after the Anglo replacement of Spanish colonialism, Mexican immigrants had dwindled to a few thousand. When the railroads and electrical systems began to be built at the turn of the century a wave of Mexican born immigrants fueled the expansion.
After the Great Depression, Exclusion and Boom
This boon was supplanted during the Great Depression, and civic and business interests in the southland sought to expatriate the immigrants. At a massive expense, and with the zealous intention of “solving the Mexican problem,” starting in 1931 some 11,000 humans were paid and sent back to Mexico. The vast majority simply returned later on. The “Mexican problem,” was replaced by the “acute labor shortage problem,” and the later was viewed as superordinate (McWilliams, 1946).
The populist concerns of the Great Depression and the New Deal of the 1930’s configured a social context of concern, entitlement and schism among Los Angeles’ predominant white culture. This context led to a backlash in a way that might be familiar for a modern reader.The 40’s became a time defined by World War. And the fever of post-war Xenophobia would ebb as a global tide, and a massive wave of immigration of both human lives and ideas would reach America’s coasts.
In Los Angeles, a transition of the city’s narrative was taking place as novels previously dedicated to middle class dynamics gave way to films chronicling the lives of those with the institutional power to alter the lives and fates of millions. Citizen Kane was born and the fascination with Los Angles became a transition from “sunshine to noir,” (Davis, 2006).
The City and Identity of Los Angeles Divided
The American-born children of early Mexican immigrants became more prevalent. Children were raised in Spanish-speaking households and in semi-sequestered neighborhoods brimming on and beyond the Eastside. Often, these youth were internally divided by religious, spiritual, ethical, social, linguistic and cultural discrepancies between their identities at home and at school or in the rest of their lives.
The generation raised without the exigencies of dire immigration circumstances, and without the privilege of ‘mainstream identity’ had large gaps in their experience both with their parents and with their adoptive city. A sense of disenfranchisement characterized the neighborhoods which typically experienced a sense of being unwanted or separated from the culture(s) that surrounded them (Avila, 2004).
Little empathy was extended to the disillusioned city in a city – Los Angeles, the largest urban home of people of Mexican descent in the world outside of only CDMX itself, never made a welcoming cradle for its coming majority population. Instead, in part driven by fervor and propaganda in the Hearst-media, Los Angeles caught ablaze with xenophobia in the year of 1942 condemnatory of “Mexican delinquency.”
Los Angeles police seized on a single well-publicized murder in to pursue large-scale raids on Mexican youth. And the Sheriff’s Department was at that time forwarding the notion of a Mexican racial predisposition to criminality – a bitterly familiar repose to modern readers (Avila, 2004).
In 1943 in the “Zoot Suit Riots,” armed mobs of thousands of Angelenos roamed the streets pulling darker complected persons indiscriminately into the streets out of movie theatres and beating them savagely as law enforcement languidly looked on. In the same year internment camps were launched for Japanese Americans (McWilliams, 1946).
It may serve to hear the synopsis of the time from McWilliams himself, writing in 1946, as it is stunningly apt today.
For the Mexicans of the Southwest will never “assimilate” in quite the same sense that other immigrant groups have been
assimilated. They are really not immigrants; they belong to the
Southwest in which important vestiges of their culture have survived
through the years. While the conditions under which such a fusion
might be expected to occur have improved of recent years, they have
not improved sufficiently to relax the current tensions. These tensions
will persist until the dominant group is prepared to accept the concept of bi-culturality, that is, until it is willing to let the Mexican
alone, to treat him with respect, to recognize his equality, and to sanction the free use of the Spanish language and whatever other
cultural traits may survive.
McWilliams, 1946, pp. 320
After the War, Deciding Who Belongs
After World War 2 Western society sought an edge of the world to fall off of. Anglo and Germanic leaning culture (thereafter often called “Scandinavian,”) would seek a void from which the past could be idealized, and the future could be sculpted without a trace of what was now dreamed to never happen.
The first psychoanalytic presence in Los Angeles consisted of study groups extending back to the advent of the practice in the 20’s. It was during this same post-war period in which a wave of (largely German/Austrian/ Swiss and Jewish) immigrants led to the establishment of institutes in Los Angeles, much as in other major U.S. cities. But the historical legacy of schism and combat to decide those who belonged and those who were to be forcefully excluded took centerstage from the beginning (1).
Freud and his daughter Anna arrived in Britain just before some of the worst Nazi bombing took place. Xenophobic tensions were overwhelming. And Psychoanalysis itself endeavored toward a goal of assessing the “rightful heir,” to Freud after his passing the next year. The schools broke apart following either of two matriarchs, Anna herself and Melanie Klein. They would both leave a legacy in Los Angeles in the coming decades (Kuriloff, 2014).
The nation was observing a “White Flight,” from urban cores and those leaving were replaced by a generation of purported economic upward mobility. Dichotomously, the New Deal’s benefit to upward mobility saw programs initiated in this time designed to further, geographically, separate new immigrants to America’s urban centers, perhaps foremostly in Los Angeles. Roosevelt’s FHA and HOLC housing programs saw to maintain a clear, bureaucratic hierarchy of race to ensure the discrimination of neighborhoods and manufacture a “vanilla suburb,” and “chocolate urban center,” (Avila, 2004).
In this context Psychoanalysis saw its American heyday. Kleinians and post-Kleinians ascended towards greater influence, and the APA saw half a century of Analyst-leadership. In Los Angeles, the institute which had existed since ’46 followed the times and separated itself into two schools, one more conservative institute dedicated to classical teaching and the other less well organized in its theoretical affiliations. This being a national schism, as the polarization in psychoanalysis that took place between the followers of Ana Freud and those of Klein, and the non-affiliated observer “middle school,” that would flourish (1).
A City on Fire
All the while this theme of splintered identity was driven to the heart of urban planning in Los Angeles. Suburbs led to the creation of highways; highways led to the advent of urban sprawl. The 50’s were an economically benign time but played host to massive policy shifts in both the city and psychoanalysis. McCarthyism and it’s “Red Scare,” of communism was in full swing, and the primary target in 1953 was affordable public housing. Largescale retractions in plans took place, and factories and industries that had depended on Mexican and Black employees during the war-time shortage rescinded integrated policies, engineering a much more white workforce abruptly (Davis, 2006).
The 60’s were a time of great change. The Los Angeles Dodgers had moved to town in the previous decade, especially famous at that time for being the first integrated baseball club. But soon in 1962, the Dodgers would move from the city center. Eminent domain was declared as a necessary policy to reconfigure “blight,” in downtown Los Angeles in the 50’s and that was exploited to raze immigrant communities across the city from Bunker Hill to the Eastside (Avila, 2004).
No seizure was more famous than that of Chavez Ravine. A brutal court case led to the forced Arechigas evictions and a sense of true despair in the community. A legacy of separation remained for Angelenos and the meaning of the Dodgers to their cultural identity, as one had been the team of Jackie Robinson, and for the other of Chavez Ravine (Krist, 2018).
A similar schism would continue to characterize Los Angeles in the psychoanalytic world. The legacy of analysts in Los Angeles following the post-Kleinian or Middle School would continue in bouts of opposition about policies, degrees, or theoretical leanings to or against such luminaries as Wilfred Bion, Alfred Mason, or Hanna Segal. Defining the rebellious, progressive sentiment that is still a part of the Los Angeles psyche to this day (1).
Look Back, Look Forward
This piece serves as a review of the decades in Los Angeles history that followed the 1920’s – a time one hundred years ago. In the American ethos, a hundred years can feel like eons. Yet, in many ways, little time has passed, and even less has changed. Modern citizens look on with concern about ICE raids taking place, forced imprisonment, property seizure – but these acts have colored Los Angeles history since the beginning. Schism, and broken pieces have been the very defining characteristic of Los Angeles since it became the city it is today.
Looking into the history of L.A., following this piece would reveal a great many movements, leaders, times of tumult, violence and corruption. From Chavez to the L.A. riots. Perhaps it is notable today, as history is being written, that the very day of the present is historical. In it’s inflammatory and incredible nature, it fits well in the history of L.A. It may be important to look at our past, in a time like this one, to have a grasp of what our own future, say the next forty years may look like. And what may be the driving factors that sculpt the city’s ethos in relation to the world.
Avila, E. (2004). Popular culture in the age of white flight: Fear and fantasy in suburban Los Angeles. University of California Press.
Beltsiou, J. (2016). Immigration in psychoanalysis: Locating ourselves. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Davis, M. (2006). City of quartz: excavating the future in Los Angeles. New ed. Verso.
1 History of Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 1950-1999 | NCP-LA retrieved from https://ncpla.libraryhost.com/?p=collections/findingaid&id=15&rootcontentid=1083
Krist, G. (2018). The mirage factory: illusion, imagination, and the invention of Los Angeles. Crown.
Kuriloff, E. A. (2014). Contemporary psychoanalysis and the legacy of the Third Reich: History, memory, tradition. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
McWilliams, C. (1946). Southern California: An island on the land. Duell, Sloan & Pearce.