Background
Franz Gabriel Alexander was born on January 22, 1891 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). He was the son of Bernard Alexander, a professor of philosophy at Budapest University, and of Regina Broessler.
(A physician and a jurist endeavor in this book to utilize...)
A physician and a jurist endeavor in this book to utilize our psychoanalytical knowledge in an attempt to gain an understanding of the criminal personality. The authors are convinced that the criminal is as legitimate an object for psychological investigation as is the neurotic or the normal individual. Contrary to common presumption, psychoanalysis is not merely a method of treatment of mental disorders; it is hoped that the pages which follow will bring proof that in addition to being a method of treatment psychoanalysis is a scientific discipline which studies the workings of the human psychic apparatus as such; hence, any field of human knowledge that deals with psychic processes of man lies eo ipso within the scope of psychoanalytical investigation. The authors hope that their venture will serve at least as a stimulus toward the future development of a psychoanalytic criminology; thus, along with the newly developed psychoanalytic ethnology and pedagogy the teaching of Freud might be utilized for the understanding of yet another aspect of our civilization. These pages, therefore, do not solicit primarily the attention of the medical psychoanalyst but rather that of the medico-legal expert and the jurist. Too, since justice is usually dispensed under the valuable control of public opinion, this book is also addressed to the general public. The professional analyst will, therefore, find in this book little which is not of purely elementary nature. However, in dealing with such subjects as dream interpretation, slips of the tongue or action, symptom formation, etc., we view them from the particular angle of criminology. May we express the hope that those who devote themselves to psychoanalytical therapy only will find in this new angle of approach a stimulus for the development of a newer point of view.
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(Alexander, Franz Et Al., Eds., Psychoanalytic Pioneers)
Alexander, Franz Et Al., Eds., Psychoanalytic Pioneers
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(The history of psychiatry;: An evaluation of psychiatric ...)
The history of psychiatry;: An evaluation of psychiatric thought and practice from prehistoric times to the present, paperback Alexander, Franz Gabriel Jan 01, 1968
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(clean copy, everything is in tact, still fairly new, exce...)
clean copy, everything is in tact, still fairly new, except the dust cover is worn a bit. very minor signs of shelf wear.
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Franz Gabriel Alexander was born on January 22, 1891 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary). He was the son of Bernard Alexander, a professor of philosophy at Budapest University, and of Regina Broessler.
Alexander was privately educated during his grammar school years, took violin lessons from the concertmaster of the Budapest Opera, and generally enjoyed the intellectual and cultural privileges of an upper-class child of that time. He graduated from the Humanistic Gymnasium and at his father's suggestion began to study archaeology at the University of Budapest. His interest soon shifted to philosophy and science and gradually to medicine. He spent some time in Göttingen, where he took courses at the university and was exposed to theoretical mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Alexander received the Doctor of Medicine from the University of Budapest in 1913.
Alexander joined the Austro-Hungarian Army and served in a medical unit until the defeat of the Central Powers. After the war he became a research associate in bacteriology at the University of Budapest's Institute for Hygiene. His growing interest in Sigmund Freud's theories prompted a move to Berlin, where he was the first training candidate accepted by the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Alexander's introduction to psychoanalytic thinking had come as an undergraduate, when his father asked him to review Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. In Göttingen and Berlin he was exposed to Freud's theory of the unconscious but turned from this approach to a study of neurophysiology. It was not until after his war experience with patients that he was convinced of the validity of the unconscious and became directly involved in psychoanalytic studies.
In Berlin, Alexander came under Freud's immediate influence. Alexander was considered one of the best of Freud's pupils, and after the completion of his analysis by Hans Sachs in 1921, he was appointed assistant at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. There he became increasingly involved in the analysis and training of the American physicians who flocked to Berlin. Their interest lay primarily in therapy, as opposed to the Europeans' more theoretical emphasis on the nature and structure of personality.
On his first trip to America in 1930, Alexander became professor of psychoanalysis in the Department of Medicine of the University of Chicago. In 1932 he was in the forefront of the exodus of anti-Nazi psychoanalysts to America. Freud, who disapproved of the move, "hoped that America will leave intact something of the real Franz Alexander. " Settling first in Boston, Alexander did research in criminology at the Judge Baker Foundation and acted as training analyst at the new Boston Psychoanalytic Institute.
Later in 1932, Alexander returned to Chicago, where he founded the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, modeled on that in Berlin. Karen Horney was associate director at the Institute from 1932 to 1934, and it was said that the interaction of these two vivid personalities was not always smooth. Alexander became a naturalized citizen in 1938. He remained director at the Chicago Institute for twenty-five years, attracting many first-rate European and American analysts, including Bruno Bettelheim, Therese Benedict, Carl Becker, and Flanders Dunbar. He initiated research in developing variations in therapeutic techniques and was especially interested in briefer methods or irregular sessions. But the main thrust of his work at Chicago lay in exploring the relationship between specific psychic conflicts and psychosomatic dysfunction, and distinguishing between hysterical conversion and psychosomatic disorders.
In 1956 Alexander moved to Los Angeles as director of psychiatric and psychosomatic research at Mt. Sinai Hospital. There his principal research involved patient-therapist interaction and a study of transference phenomena in the therapeutic process.
From 1957 to 1963 he was clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He died in Palm Springs, California, shortly before he was to assume the newly established Franz Alexander chair in psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine.
(The history of psychiatry;: An evaluation of psychiatric ...)
(A physician and a jurist endeavor in this book to utilize...)
(clean copy, everything is in tact, still fairly new, exce...)
(Alexander, Franz Et Al., Eds., Psychoanalytic Pioneers)
Alexander was in the best sense antiauthoritarian. He believed in autonomy for the individual psychoanalytic institutes and thought that an overemphasis on uniformity was achieved at the expense of genuine growth. Certainly in his life and work he exemplified the questioning spirit he theoretically endorsed.
To a degree shared by only a few other psychoanalysts, among them Karen Horney, he was always aware of the importance of the cultural setting, as well as early life experience, in the development of personality.
He persistently presented new or critical views, seeking always to promote psychoanalysis as a science, to subject its tenets and procedures to objective report, review, and evaluation.
Quotations:
“The fact that the mind rules the body is, in spite of its neglect by biology and medicine, the most fundamental fact which we know about the process of life. ”
"It is paradoxical but nonetheless true that the nearer man comes to his goal to make his life easy and abundant, the more he undermines the foundations of a meaningful existence. "
Alexander was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. In 1921 he became a member of the German Psychoanalytic Society.
Alexander was a creative and charismatic personality with a broad range of interests and intellectual pursuits. His heritage and life experience, spanning two continents in a time of profound social change, fitted him to apply his psychoanalytic insights to art, culture, politics, and philosophy, as well as his own profession. He moved from the stable humanist tradition of prewar, upper-class Austria-Hungary, with its clearly defined values and commitments, to the chaos, social and cultural upheaval, changing moods, and relativist values of postwar Europe and America.
He was often prescient in his interests, at the growing edge of psychoanalytic theory--for example, in a paper, published in the early years in Berlin, that first articulated the ideas of the new ego psychology. Alexander was a leader, active in the institutional organizations of the psychoanalytic community, and always on guard against the stultifying effects of intellectual conformity. He was able to attract excellent colleagues and to work productively with them. He could deviate from or disagree with orthodox views without stirring up animosity or personalizing disputed issues. Friends and colleagues wondered whether he repressed the impact of the controversies he often precipitated, or merely deemed it politically expedient to ignore them. In any event, he usually stayed above the factionalism he deplored and remained in good standing with the community and on good terms with Freud.
On March 7, 1921, Alexander married Anita Venier; they had two daughters.