Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Viktor Tausk was born on March 12, 1879, in Zsilina, Slovakia, and committed suicide on July 3, 1919, in Vienna.

The eldest of nine children, Tausk came from a German-speaking, non-religious Jewish family that, soon after his birth, moved to Croatia. His parents had an unsuccessful marriage. His father, Hermann, was a bright, ambitious, and popular newspaperman, who at one point managed the press office of the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Tausk would oppose his father's attachment to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by supporting the Yugoslavian nationalist movement and by becoming fluent in Serbo-Croatian.

Tausk, in fact, grew up hating his father while maintaining strong affection for his mother, Emilie. Brilliant in school and multilingual, he initially chose to study law rather than costly medical studies. At Mostar, where he practiced for a time as a lawyer's assistant, he preferred to...