Stjepan Betlheim

Background

Betlheim was born in Zagreb to a Jewish family.

Education

He studied medicine in Graz and Vienna, where he showed interest in psychoanalysis and attended lectures of Sigmund Freud. He graduated in 1922. After the first analysis with Paul Schilder, Betlheim completed his training with Sandor Rado.

Career

Betlheim specialised in neuropsychiatry in Vienna, Berlin, Zürich, and Paris. During his specialisation, he published six articles in distinguished Austrian and German neurological or neuropsychiatric journals. He worked at the Vienna neuropsychiatric clinic headed by Julius Wagner-Jauregg.

Betlheim"s first analyses were supervised by Karen Horney and Helene Deutsch.

He returned to Zagreb in 1928. During World World War II, in 1941, the Independent State of Croatia authorities sent Betlheim, Stjepan Steiner and 80 other Jewish physicians to Bosnia to treat endemic syphilis.

He later escaped and joined Partisans. After the war, in 1948, he became an assistant at the Neurologic-psychiatric Clinic of the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, where he introduced the psychoanalytical dimension into the understanding of mental illnes.

Betlheim further developed the group therapy for sexual disorders.

In 1953 Betlheim founded the ambulatory psychotherapeutic ward, the first in Croatia, at the neurologic-psychiatric Clinic of the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb and neuropsychiatric clinic at the University Hospital Centre Zagreb. Parallel to his therapeutic work, Betlheim was also a prolific scientist and teacher. Betlheim was married to Marie Luise (née Morgenroth) with whom he had a daughter named Ruth.

Until his death Betlheim treated patients, taught and did scientific research.

He was buried at the Mirogoj Cemetery.

Achievements

• In 1998 Croatian Post issued a stamp to honor him. A Bust of Professor Doctor Stjepan Betlheim is placed in front of the University Hospital Centre Zagreb. His daughter wrote a book about the life of her father, which was issued and presented in 2006 at the Jewish community in Zagreb.

Works

• book

  • PSIHIJATRIJA

Membership

He became a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1952.