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Reviewing the new German edition of selected papers of Ludwig Binswanger, an overview of Binswanger's life and work is given. Deeply rooted in a psychiatric sanatorium tradition established in the nineteenth century by his grandfather, Binswanger sought contact with Bleuler, Jung and Freud, and tried to treat his severely ill patients with individual psychoanalysis. In addition, the therapeutic milieu always played a great role in his work and thinking. Binswanger's experiences with psychotic patients lead him to a philosophical, existential view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Moving beyond Freud, he dealt with psychotic phenomena and maintained that paranoia, mania and depression can be treated by psychotherapy if the therapist exposes himself in an existential manner with the patient. The author expresses his critical opinion of the editors of the present collection for leaving out important psychoanalytic papers written by Binswanger. Binswanger's deviations from the psychoanalytic mainstream is overemphasized – as a matter of fact he remained a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society until his death and can be regarded as one of the most important theorists of modern psychoanalysis dealing also with psychotic phenomena.
Frieda Fromm-Reichmann became famous with her intensive psychotherapy of psychotic patients which she developed in Chestnut Lodge where she worked, after having left Nazi Germany, from 1935 until her death in 1957. The paper outlines her life and work in Germany. Studying medicine in Königsberg (East Prussia), she wrote her dissertation about pupillary changes in schizophrenia and worked during World War 1 under the famous neurologist Kurt Goldstein with brain injured soldiers. They both differentiated between somatic and psychic factors in neurologic patients and published articles about neurotraumatology including aphasia. Between 1920 and 1923, she worked in the psychotherapeutic sanatorium Weisser Hirsch in Dresden under J.H. Schultz where she treated neurotic and psychotic patients. In these years, she started her training analysis and her psychoanalytic teaching and publishing. From 1924 to 1933 she led a kosher psychoanalytic sanatorium in Heidelberg, co-founded the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Society and gave university lectures in psychoanalysis in Frankfurt and Heidelberg. She became a close friend of Georg Groddeck who treated also somatically ill patients with psychoanalysis. — Her great promoters furthered different important attitudes which got very important for Fromm-Reichmann later: Goldstein the natural scientific discipline, Fromm the political view, Groddeck the therapeutic optimism.
Reply to Ann‑Louise Silver
(1999)
The paper presents historical remarks about psychoanalysis in institutions with a special focus on the contributions of nurses working in psychoanalytic settings. A case report of the forensic psychotherapy ward in Reichenau Mental Hospital, which is organised as a therapeutic community, shows how individual psychotherapy, group psychotherapy and special nursing care contribute to significant progress in the treatment of a severely narcissistic arsonist.
The paper discusses Frieda Fromm-Reichmann's theoretical contributions on the psychotherapy of psychoses and refers it to other authors' views. Today widely accepted, she stressed transference and countertransference as es-sential issues in the treatment of severely disturbed patients. She disagreed with authors like Federn who interpreted the concept of regression in a way that to treat schizophrenics means to treat children of different ages. Different from Federn, she advocated interpretations also of the positive transference to show the patient where he stands in life. Later on, Fromm-Reichmann opposed John Rosen and his direct analysis interpreting first the contents of the psychotic's speech. She stressed the form of the interaction and of the everyday behaviour where she saw where the patient stands in the world. The discussion shows that Fromm-Reichmann developed her theories and practice in cooperation and discussion with other psychoanalysts working with psychotic patients.