TY - JOUR A1 - Frank, Claudia T1 - Herbert Rosenfeld in Germany: On the seductive/corruptive effect of idealizing destructive elements then and now JF - International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25 (No. 4, 2016), pp. 229-240. N2 - In connection with a conference in memory of Herbert Rosenfeld in 2014 in his home town of Nuremberg, from which he had to flee in 1935, the author did some research on the work of this outstanding, later British, psychoanalyst in Germany. The first results are presented here. How the first links came about remains unclear, but a few of his articles were published in German from 1955, and in the 1970s he held occasional seminars in Munich. His contacts with colleagues from the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV) at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s (until his death in 1986), especially through a supervision group he led, seem, however, to have been the most influential ones. Rosenfeld transmitted a particularly >experience-near< approach to the patient, which also acknowledged and took seriously (self) destructive elements in the transference and countertransference. Over the following years and decades, a number of colleagues wished to deepen this approach. How this line was further developed is illustrated by outlining Gottfried Appy’s clinical description of an intrusive speechlessness. Rosenfeld’s ideas on the pernicious effect of idealizing destructive elements are especially stressed, as they contributed to thinking about the entanglements with Nazi Germany and in addition are still useful in analytic practice, out of which they were developed. Y1 - 2016 ER -