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Revista Portuguesa de Psicossomática ISSN: 0874-4696 [email protected] Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicossomática Portugal Kutter, Peter A short history of psychoanalytic psychosomatics in German -speaking countries Revista Portuguesa de Psicossomática, vol. 2, núm. 2, jul/dez, 2000, pp. 79-86 Sociedade Portuguesa de Psicossomática Porto, Portugal Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=28720208 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative Revista Portuguesa Revistade 79PortuguesaPsicossomática Psychoanalytic psychosomatics in German-speaking countries de Psicossomática A short history of psychoanalytic psychosomatics in German- -speaking countries Peter Kutter* Abstract influence of outstanding figures such The author discusses the development as Paracelsus (1493-1541) and Mes- of psychoanalytic psychosomatics in Ger- mer (1734-1815) on the thinking and man-speaking countries from a historical feeling of the people in Europe about and cultural perspective. body and mind cannot be disre- Influenced by a broad European back- garded. Poets such as Novalis; phy- ground and characterised by occidental sicians such as Carl Gustav Carus philosophy and the literary epoch of Ro- (1789-1869); and philosophers such as manticism the author traces its roman ba- Kant (1724-1804), Nietzsche (1844- sis to the work of Sigmund Freud. -1900), and Schopenhauer (1788-1860) worked intensively on the compli- cated relationships between body and The Philosophical and Romantic mind. These included from the begin- Tradition ning the instincts, affects, feelings, and "evil," as well as the dreams, the In contrast to the english-spea- "illogical" or "unconscious", and se- king world, psychoanalytic psychoso- xuality. Nietzsche (1966) discovered matics in Germany, Austria, and Swit- repression: "I did this, my memory zerland has been strongly influenced says. I cannot have done it, my pride by a broad European background. It says, and remains implacable. Finally is characterized above all by the memory yields" (p. 625). Even Freud’s Occidental philosophy of the so- concept of the "id" (not I think, but it -called Enlightenment and by the li- thinks) most probably goes back to terary epoch of Romanticism. The Nietzsche. In the literature of Roman- common basis, as in the English- ticism human beings were controlled -speaking countries, is naturally the by passions and were not in control psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. of themselves (see the novel Lucinde From a historical view, however, the by Friedrich von Schlegel). The rela- tionship to the "occult" was close, for example, in Justinus Kerner. Ques- tions of religiosity and of the funda- *Professor at Johann Wolfgang Goethe – mental guilt of human beings were University of Frankfurt, Germany. likewise predominant. All of this was Vol. 2, nº 2, Jul/Dez 2000 Peter Kutter 80 normal in the thoughts, feelings, and The Body-Mind Problem actions of human beings in all social classes. So it comes as no surprise that Psychoanalytic psychosomatics in this cultural environment the con- cannot be understood without the cept of psychosomatics also came to fundamental tension that exists be- be a symbol of the unity of body and tween res extensa and res cogitans mind (Heinroth, 1818). Yet every hu- (Descartes), without the bipolar con- man being was seen perfectly trast or discrepancy between matter idiographically as an individual with and consciousness, between body a wholly individual destiny. It was not and mind. It is therefore immediately by chance that the European tradition evident that the development of psy- produced the philosophical direction chosomatic theory has also been sig- of so-called hermeneutics, which is nificantly determined by this basal about original experience, under- contrast. Among psychosomatic spe- standing, and sensibility, starting with cialists there are materialists for the theologian Schleiermacher (1959), whom the body also determines the via Dilthey (1977), and up to Gadamer mind and spiritualists for whom, in- (1960). In addition, European thin- versely, the mind determines the king has addressed itself incessantly body. In the "isomorph-postulate" to the existential dimension of the hu- (Köhler, 1920), body and mind are man being: his being, his basal anxie- identical. In "emergentism" they are ty, his basic situations of anxiety, strictly separate (Bischoff, 1989). Yet struggle, guilt, suffering and death feelings and affects each have three (Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers). components: an emotional state, a The counterweight to the idiographic subjective experience and a motor view of human beings in the humani- expression. From the scientific per- ties was provided by scientific thin- spective, the emotional state is com- king, in philosophy by critical rationa- prehended as being physiological, lism, in psychology by Pavlov and experience psychological or psycho- Wundt, and in behavioral science by analytic, and the motor expression Konrad Lorenz and Tinbergen. Here sociological. Therefore, we shall en- it was a question of "nomothetic" laws counter these three dimensions in all in human life and behavior, the bio- scientific endeavors that deal theoreti- logical basics, the parallels with ani- cally with the body-mind problem or mals. "The paradigm of the machine" practically with the physical-mental is "the explanatory model for the life processes, be they healthy or ill. processes", which, like a car, must be repaired at the garage in order to function again, "particularly attrac- The Development of Psychoana- tive to doctors because clear and sim- lytic Psychosomatics in Germany ple instructions of interpretation and action can be deduced from it" According to Uexküll (1986), the (Uexküll, 1986, p. 19). following three phases can be roughly Revista Portuguesa de Psicossomática Revista Portuguesa de 81Psicossomática Psychoanalytic psychosomatics in German-speaking countries identified: a first phase in which peo- many psychoanalysts saw physical ple start to be interested not only in illnesses in the perspective of the the somatic substratum, the structure, "conversion process" as hysteria. but also in its functions. Physiologists While Georg Groddek was the most such as Johannes Peter Müller (1801- uncompromising in interpreting all -1858) made the first moves and doc- possible physical illnesses as hysteria, tors interested in internal diseases, other psychoanalysts such as Felix such as Ludolph von Krehl and Viktor Deutsch were more circumspect. It is von Weizsacker in Heidelberg or true that in terms of psychophysical Gustav von Bergmann in Munich, dualism he made distinctions be- expanded this direction. A "pathology tween body and mind, yet he tried to of functions" replaced the hitherto bridge the mysterious leap between predominant "pathology of anatomic body and mind by understanding the structures" (Uexküll, 1986, p. 20). The "symbolization as a formative stage human being is now no longer the of the conversion process" (Deutsch, object of research that is diagnosed 1959, pp. 7597). and given therapy; decisive is the The second phase developed for "subjective factor" or the "sick person" the most part in English-speaking (Weizsäcker, 1951, p. 232) and thus his countries (after the forced exodus of personal biography. In place of Jewish psychoanalysts caused by the objectifying medicine a medical an- Holocaust), especially in the United thropology appeared. This is demon- States, "when the emigres came to strated not only in the writings of America" (Kurzweil, 1995, p. 196 ff.). Viktor von Weizsäcker but also in The following authors are merely a those of Richard Siebeck (1953), who, few outstanding examples of this im- in line with Johannes Müller and portant epoch of psychoanalytic Ludolph Krehl, linked the origin of psychosomatics: Dunbar (1935), physical illnesses with the intensely Weiss and English (1943), Alexander personal life history of the patients. (1950), Grinker (1953), Garner and As early as 1925 there was a compre- Wenar (1959), and Fliess (1961). With hensive psychopathology of diseases Alexander, French, and Pollock of all organic systems (Schwarz, (1968), the specificity theory of psy- 1925). chosomatic illnesses reached its ze- The new anthropological view, nith. An example of the fate of an which came from the old European emigre that was confined to Europe tradition, proved to be greatly com- is that of Erich Stern (1950) who be- patible with the discoveries of came a professor at the University of Sigmund Freud. Although Freud, in Giessen in 1920, emigrated to Paris in a letter to von Weizsäcker of 16 Octo- 1933, and advocated, as early as 1950, ber 1932 (von Weizsäcker, 1947, p. 6), a theory of unspecificity for psycho- had been dismissive of the use of his somatic conditions (see Putzke 1996, psychoanalysis for physical illnesses, p. 128). Vol. 2, nº 2, Jul/Dez 2000 Peter Kutter 82 In Germany, psychoanalysis and outstanding figure was Alexander psychosomatic medicine had been Mitscherlich. In resistance to Hitler massively perverted by the national- and as a scientific observer at the -socialist dictatorship. There did ex- Nuremberg trial of German doctors, ist a so-called "German Institute of he was predestined to develop a com- Psychological Research and Psycho- pletely