Robert C. Bak (1908–1974) was a Hungarian-born psychoanalyst who moved to the United States in 1941, and eventually became President of the New York Psychoanalytic Society.
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.
[4] Bak also reiterated the importance of the idea of the phallic mother in the perverse denial of castration.
[5] A flamboyant and witty lover of the good life,[6] Bak had a troubled marital relationship, and no children.
[7] 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".