Franz Alexander | |
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 Memorial in the Ludwigkirchstraße, Berlin | |
| Born | Alexander Ferenc Gábor 22 January 1891 |
| Died | 8 March 1964 (aged 73) |
| Nationality | Hungarian |
| Citizenship | American |
| Known for | Psychosomatic medicine criminology |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychoanalysis |
Franz Gabriel Alexander (22 January 1891 – 8 March 1964) was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and physician, who is considered one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalytic criminology.
Franz Gabriel Alexander, in Hungarian Alexander Ferenc Gábor, was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1891, his father was Bernhard Alexander, a philosopher and literary critic, his nephew was Alfréd Rényi, a Hungarian mathematician who made contributions in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory but mostly in probability theory. Alexander studied in Berlin; there he was part of an influential group of German analysts mentored by Karl Abraham, including Karen Horney and Helene Deutsch, and gathered around the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. 'In the early 1920s, Oliver Freud was in analysis with Franz Alexander' there — Sigmund Freud's son — while 'Charles Odier, one of the first among French psychoanalysts, was analysed in Berlin by Franz Alexander' [1] as well.
In 1930 he was invited by Robert Hutchins, then President of the University of Chicago, to become its Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis. Alexander worked there at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where Paul Rosenfels was one of his students. In the 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research.
Franz Alexander died in Palm Springs, California in 1964. [2]
Alexander was a prolific writer. Between 'The Castration Complex in the Formation of Character [1923] ... [&] Fundamental Concepts of Psychosomatic Research [1943]' [3] he published nearly twenty other articles, contributing on a wide variety of subjects to the work of the "second psychoanalytic generation".
'Alexander in his "vector analysis"... measured the relative participation of the three basic directions in which an organism's tendencies towards the external world may be effective: reception, elimination, and retention'. [4] In this he may have been a forerunner to Erik H. Erikson's later exploration of 'Zones, Modes, and Modalities'. [5]
He also explored the 'morality demanded by the archaic superego ... an automatized pseudo morality, characterized by Alexander as the corruptibility of the superego'. [6]
Notable too was his exploration of acting out in real life, 'in which the patient's entire life consists of actions not adapted to reality but rather aimed at relieving unconscious tensions. It was this type of neurosis that was first described by Alexander under the name of neurotic character'. [7]
Franz Alexander led the movement looking for the dynamic interrelation between mind and body. [8] Sigmund Freud pursued a deep interest in psychosomatic illnesses following his correspondence with Georg Groddeck who was, at the time, researching the possibility of treating physical disorders through psychological processes. [9]
Together with Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Alexander developed the concept of autoplastic adaptation. They proposed that when an individual was presented with a stressful situation, he could react in one of two ways:
From the 1930s through the 1950s, numerous analysts were engaged with the question of how to shorten the course of therapy but still achieve therapeutic effectiveness. These included Alexander, Ferenczi, and Wilhelm Reich. Alexander found that the patients who tended to benefit the most greatly from therapy were those who could rapidly engage, could describe a specific therapeutic focus, and could quickly move to an experience of their previously warded-off feelings. These also happened to represent those patients who were the healthiest to begin with and therefore had the least need for the therapy being offered. Clinical research revealed that these patients were able to benefit because they were the least resistant. They were the least resistant because they were the least traumatised and therefore had the smallest burden of repressed emotion. However, among the patients coming to the clinic for various problems, the rapid responders represented only a small minority. What could be offered to those who represented the vast bulk of patients coming for treatment? See further Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy.
In the forties ... Franz Alexander, following the lead of Sandor Ferenczi, proposed ... the form of a "corrective emotional experience", which enjoyed an enormous vogue. [10]
Alexander stated: [11]
The patient, in order to be helped, must undergo a corrective emotional experience suitable to repair the traumatic influence of previous experiences. It is of secondary importance whether this corrective experience takes place during treatment in the transference relationship, or parallel with the treatment in the daily life of the patient.
The concept provoked much controversy, provoking opposition from figures as disparate as Kurt R. Eissler, Edward Glover, and Jacques Lacan, who later said 'I did not hesitate to attack it myself in the most categorical way ... at the 1950 Congress of Psychiatry, but, it is the construction of a man of great talent'. [12]
By the sixties, Alexander's conception was in retreat, and at the close of the following decade an analyst could ask rhetorically 'Who talks about Franz Alexander today — except those who want to put down his "corrective emotional experience" or to deny, as the Kohutians are at constant pains to do, that they are offering more of the same?'. [13] Ongoing developments in object relations theory and the rise of self psychology would however lead to a revival of interest in the idea.
It was championed again by Moberly (1985). In the latter's view, corrective emotional experience represents essentially what is therapeutic in analysis'. [14] Even those with continuing reservations about the idea conceded that 'when Alexander was writing ... it was pertinent for him to be drawing attention to the therapeutic value of the emotional experience of patients in analysis'. [15]
In the twenty-first century, the term has passed into common psychodynamic parlance. Thus notions of testing the relationship in cognitive therapy are seen as 'not dissimilar to the notion of the "corrective emotional experience" in psychodynamic therapy'; elucidation in existential therapy as opening up 'new experiences with the therapist, thus providing a corrective interpersonal experience'. [16]
Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Sándor Ferenczi was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud.
Otto Rank was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, editor of the two leading analytic journals of the era, managing director of Freud's publishing house, and a creative theorist and therapist. In 1926, Rank left Vienna for Paris and, for the remainder of his life, led a successful career as a lecturer, writer, and therapist in France and the United States.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are two categories of psychological therapies. Their main purpose is revealing the unconscious content of a client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension, which is inner conflict within the mind that was created in a situation of extreme stress or emotional hardship, often in the state of distress. The terms "psychoanalytic psychotherapy" and "psychodynamic psychotherapy" are often used interchangeably, but a distinction can be made in practice: though psychodynamic psychotherapy largely relies on psychoanalytical theory, it employs substantially shorter treatment periods than traditional psychoanalytical therapies. Psychodynamic psychotherapy is evidence-based; the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and its relationship to facts is disputed.
Repetition compulsion is the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat a traumatic event or its circumstances. This may take the form of symbolically or literally re-enacting the event, or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to occur again. Repetition compulsion can also take the form of dreams in which memories and feelings of what happened are repeated, and in cases of psychosis, may even be hallucinated.
Otto Fenichel was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation". He was born into a prominent family of Jewish lawyers.
In psychoanalysis, resistance is the individual's efforts to prevent repressed drives, feelings or thoughts from being integrated into conscious awareness.
Paul Ferdinand Schilder was an Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and medical researcher.
Hermann/Herman Nunberg was a psychoanalyst and neurologist.
Identification is a psychological process whereby the individual assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed wholly or partially by the model that other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified. The roots of the concept can be found in Freud's writings. The three most prominent concepts of identification as described by Freud are: primary identification, narcissistic (secondary) identification and partial (secondary) identification.
Alloplastic adaptation is a form of adaptation where the subject attempts to change the environment when faced with a difficult situation. Criminality, mental illness, and activism can all be classified as categories of alloplastic adaptation.
Autoplastic adaptation is a form of adaptation where the subject attempts to change itself when faced with a difficult situation.
Edward George Glover was a British psychoanalyst. He first studied medicine and surgery, and it was his elder brother, James Glover (1882–1926) who attracted him towards psychoanalysis. Both brothers were analysed in Berlin by Karl Abraham; indeed, the "list of Karl Abraham's analysands reads like a roster of psychoanalytic eminence: the leading English analysts Edward and James Glover" at the top. He then settled down in London where he became an influential member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1921. He was also close to Ernest Jones.
The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute is a center for psychoanalytic research, training, and education on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The institute provides professional training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It was founded in 1932 by Franz Alexander, a pioneer in psychosomatic medicine at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, who moved to Chicago at the invitation of Robert Maynard Hutchins, then president of the University of Chicago. Notable psychoanalysts that have been associated with the institute include Karl Menninger, Karen Horney, Thomas Szasz, Therese Benedek, Hedda Bolgar, Roy Grinker, Maxwell Gitelson, Louis Shapiro, Heinz Kohut, Arnold Goldberg, Jerome Kavka, Frank Summers, Ernest A. Rappaport, and Michael Franz Basch.
Within the work of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), orgastic potency is a human's natural ability to experience an orgasm with certain psychosomatic characteristics and resulting in full sexual gratification.
Sandor Rado was a Hungarian psychoanalyst of the second generation, who moved to the United States in the 1930s.
Ernst Simmel was a German-American neurologist and psychoanalyst.
Henry Zvi Lothane is a Polish-born American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, educator and author. Lothane is currently Clinical Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, specializing in the area of psychotherapy. He is the author of some eighty scholarly articles and reviews on various topics in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and the history of psychotherapy, as well as the author of a book on the famous Schreber case, entitled In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. In Defense of Schreber examines the life and work of Daniel Paul Schreber against the background of 19th and early 20th century psychiatry and psychoanalysis.
Edoardo Weiss (1889-1970) was the earliest Italian psychoanalyst, and the founder of psychoanalysis in Italy. His most important theoretical contributions were perhaps to the development of ego state theory.
{{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)Venier-Alexander, Ilonka. The Life & Times of Franz Alexander: From Budapest to California. London:Karnac Books, 2014.
Venier- Alexander, Ilonka. Growing Up Alexander: My Life With A Psychoanalytic Pioneer. London: Karnac Books, 2017.
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