“Psychoanalysis is good, synthesis is better”: The German reception of Freud, 1930 and 1956

Kauders, Anthony D.

doi:10.1002/jhbs.20517

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In fact, as some examples show, those psychiatrists who were interested in psychotherapy were often willing to include psychoanalytic elements in their own approaches. In the case of Stransky, the use of psychoanalytic ideas and concepts happened mostly tacitly; his younger colleague Kogerer explicitly used some psychoanalytic methods in his outpatient clinic and described his own, eclectic approach as ‘analytic-synthetic psychotherapy with a suggestive symptomatic treatment’ (Kogerer, 1928; Kauders, 2011). This kind of piecemeal appropriation was hardly desirable for psychoanalysts, who saw their approach as a rigorous and coherent system in which theory and practice were inextricably linked.…”

Section: Psychotherapy and Politics In Inter-war Viennamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Subordination, authority, psychotherapy’

Freis

2017

History of the Human Sciences

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This article explores the history of ‘subordination-authority-relation’ (SAR) psychotherapy, a brand of psychotherapy largely forgotten today that was introduced and practised in inter-war Vienna by the psychiatrist Erwin Stransky (1877–1962). I situate ‘SAR’ psychotherapy in the medical, cultural and political context of the inter-war period and argue that – although Stransky’s approach had little impact on historical and present-day debates and reached only a very limited number of patients – it provides a particularly clear example for the political dimensions of psychotherapy. In the early 20th century, the emerging field of psychotherapy was largely dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis and its Adlerian and Jungian offshoots. Psychotherapists’ relations with academic psychiatry were often uneasy, but the psychodynamic schools succeeded in establishing independent institutions for training and treatment. However, as this article shows, the gulf between mainstream psychiatry and psychotherapy was not as wide as many histories of the psy-disciplines in the early 20th century suggest. In inter-war Vienna, where these conflicts raged most fiercely, Stransky’s ‘SAR’ psychotherapy was intended as an academic psychiatrist’s response to the challenge posed by the emerging competitors. Moreover, Stransky also proposed a political alternative to the existing psychotherapeutic schools. Whereas psychoanalysis was a liberal project, and Adlerian individual psychology was closely affiliated with the socialist movement, ‘SAR’ psychotherapy with its focus on authority, subordination and social hierarchy tried to translate a right-wing, authoritarian understanding of society into a treatment for nervous disorders.

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Section: Psychotherapy and Politics In Inter-war Viennamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Subordination, authority, psychotherapy’

Freis

2017

History of the Human Sciences

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“…The account Mitscherlich developed in 1963 was very obviously aligned with the views expressed in popular works by Erikson, Riesman, Marcuse and others (he cites Riesman, Gorer and Erikson explicitly). There are a number of reasons for this – The Lonely Crowd and Childhood and Society were highly influential texts which reached a very broad reading public, but also, as Martin Dehli (2009) has pointed out, international recognition and contact with America were important factors in Mitscherlich’s attempts to centralize his own position in the fraught field of postwar German psychoanalysis (see also Kauders, 2011a: 394, on the reception of American sociology as instrumental for the ‘Westernization’ of German psychiatry and psychotherapy in this period). Mitscherlich establishes the importance of the family group for socialization (1969: 137), and he singles out the father–son relationship, which holds a special position in a ‘paternalist society’ (ibid.…”

Section: Society Without the Fathermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of these authors were psychoanalytically oriented to a greater or lesser degree, and to a certain extent the Frankfurt School was itself instrumental in reintroducing Freud’s ideas in Germany after their eradication under Nazism (Meja, Misgeld and Stehr, 1987: 14). A landmark here was the 1956 symposium for the Freud centenary, co-organized by Mitscherlich and Horkheimer, and for which Marcuse was invited back from the USA to deliver lectures alongside Erikson, Ludwig Binswanger, Michael Balint and other key psychologists of the period (Kauders, 2011a).…”

Section: Introduction: the Father As Both Social And Historical Objectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychoanalytic sociology and the traumas of history

ffytche

2017

History of the Human Sciences

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This article examines the way aspects of recent history were excluded in key studies emerging from psychoanalytic social psychology of the mid-twentieth century. It draws on work by Erikson, Marcuse and Fromm, but focuses in particular on Alexander Mitscherlich. Mitscherlich, a social psychologist associated with the later Frankfurt school, was also the most important psychoanalytic figure in postwar Germany. This makes his work significant for tracing ways in which historical experience of the war and Nazism was filtered out of psychosocial narratives in this period, in favour of more structural analyses of the dynamics of social authority. Mitscherlich's 1967 work The Inability to Mourn, co-authored with Margarete Mitscherlich, is often cited as the point at which the 'missing' historical experience flooded back into psychoanalytic accounts of society. I argue that this landmark publication doesn't hail the shift towards the psychoanalysis of historical experience with which it is often associated. These more sociological writers of the mid-century were writing before the impact of several trends occurring in the 1980s-90s which decisively shifted psychoanalytic attention away from the investigation of social authority and towards a focus on historical trauma. Ultimately this is also a narrative about the transformations which occur when psychoanalysis moves across disciplines.

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“…Freud had no history of participating in criminal cases. Even if he had not been preparing to receive the Goethe Prize in 1930 (Kauders, 2011), it is unlikely he would have been receptive to playing a role in rebutting the Halsmann prosecution's testimony in person. As it was, he had already turned down a fortune to comment on the mental state of Chicago defendants Loeb and Leopold in 1924 (Kahr, 2005).…”

Section: Freud Weighs Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bearing False Witness: Psychiatric Testimony in Nazi-Influenced Austria, 1928–1929

Weiss¹

2012

The Journal of Psychiatry & Law

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s teaching of honesty and integrity in forensic psychiatric work resonates both with current ethical principles and the ancient proscription against bearing false witness against one's fellow citizen. This article explores the misuse of psychiatric testimony in a 1928-1929 murder prosecution in Innsbruck, Austria. Amid clear undercurrents of Nazism, a Jewish youth found himself on trial for the murder of his father. Though there was no evidence that he was guilty, the expert testimony included distorted presentations of psychology and Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud and others protested the misuse of his work to convict the defendant, noting the difficulty in adapting psychoanalytic theory to legal settings. After 2 years in prison, the young man was set free, later becoming a world-renowned portrait photographer. Forensic professionals must continue to be vigilant in self-regulating the use of scientific information in legal settings.

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“Psychoanalysis is good, synthesis is better”: The German reception of Freud, 1930 and 1956

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

‘Subordination, authority, psychotherapy’

‘Subordination, authority, psychotherapy’

Psychoanalytic sociology and the traumas of history

Bearing False Witness: Psychiatric Testimony in Nazi-Influenced Austria, 1928–1929

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