Masks Of Love And Life: The Philosophical Basis Of Psychoanalysis
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
The Creative Unconscious: Studies In The Psychoanalysis Of Art
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Hanns Sachs was a psychoanalyst, training analyst, and author.
Background
He was born on January 10, 1881 in Vienna, Austria, the second son and youngest of four children of Samuel Sachs and Heimine (Heller) Sachs. His father was a lawyer, as were many of his forebears - indeed, he came from a family in which training in the law and in the arts was paramount.
One of his sisters was a novelist, and his brother, twelve years his senior, was a playwright. Hanns Sachs's brother, Otto, who died when Hanns was sixteen, was deeply interested in dreams, and perhaps was the early inspiration for Hanns's later devotion to Freud's theory of dreams and his own beliefs about the community of daydreams which unites friends.
Education
He attended Freud's lectures faithfully.
Career
In 1912, Freud appointed Sachs coeditor of Imago, along with Otto Rank. Imago was a journal specializing in nonmedical applications of psychoanalysis, or what has been called "applied analysis. " Sachs and Rank combined to produce several classical works which showed how psychoanalytic concepts could clarify other fields of study, especially mythology and anthropology. When Rank split off from Freud in the furor over the birth trauma, Sachs remained faithful to Freud and above the battles, then and afterward.
In 1918 Sachs's delicate health broke down and he was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Switzerland. There, in Zurich, he established a psychiatric practice, which he pursued until he was called to the Berlin Training Institute to become the first training analyst. None of the early analysts had more than a smattering of personal psychoanalysis, ranging from none at all to a few months "psychoanalysis" with someone who was in all likelihood a friend and colleague.
In 1932 Sachs immigrated to the United States, one of the first European analysts of Jewish extraction to do so. Boston became his home, and Harvard Medical School his professional base. In Boston, he found a friend and early patient in Dr. Stanley Cobb, who was a distinguished psychiatrist and neurologist and a member of the social and medical aristocracy of New England. Cobb's support was instrumental in the acceptance of psychoanalysis in the Boston community, and possibly in even wider circles.
From his Marlboro Street home, Sachs continued his teaching at Harvard and his writing and analysis of physicians until the day he died, from the ravages of combined illnesses, including a terminal myocardial infarction on Jan. 10, 1947.
Sachs was attracted to Freud and his ideas as early as 1904.
In his work he emphasized the primacy of intuition and the creative unconscious. His main theme is that life and death are linked together through beauty. Perhaps the pursuit of beauty removed Sachs from the give-and-take of everyday activities. For Sachs, the artist mastered his own anxiety and guilt by externalizing and sharing his conflicts. Producing beauty enabled the artist to reduce his sensitivity to hurts and to reconcile himself with his narcissism.
Quotations:
Freud describing him as one "in whom my confidence is unlimited in spite of the shortness of our acquaintance".
Membership
He became a member of the inner group of analysts who formed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society; he was also one of the original circle of Freud's closest associates, later known as the "Seven Rings. "
Personality
He was an extremely learned man who was intuitive, intelligent, cultivated, and trustworthy. His mastery of English style, vocabulary, and prose was extraordinary.
Connections
Sachs's only marriage ended in divorce. There were no children.