FENICHEL - The psychoanalytic theory of neuro... Lot n° 1043

Otto Fenichel (born December 2, 1897, in Vienna; January 22, 1946, in Los Angeles) was a psychoanalyst. He began his medical studies in Vienna in 1915. Fenichel came into close contact with Sigmund Freud at an early age and attended his lectures from 1915 to 1919. In 1920, at the age of 23, he became a member of the Psychoanalytical Association of Vienna. In 1922 Fenichel moved to Berlin, where he lived until 1933. A commemorative glass plate from the series "Mit Freud in Berlin". It refers to his life and work since 2007. In Berlin, Fenichel received his specialized training in neurology and psychiatry with Bonhoeffer and Cassirer at the Charité. In 1931 he published a two-volume theory of neuroses; later expanded and updated in American exile, this work established Fenichel's reputation as "the encyclopedist of psychoanalysis. In 1924, together with Harald Schultz-Hencke, Fenichel founded the so-called "children's seminar" at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin, an association of young analysts and training candidates devoted to informal discussion. During his stay in Berlin he founded an informal group of psychoanalysts oriented towards Marxism (1929). When he emigrated to Oslo in 1934, Prague in 1935 and Los Angeles in 1938, he organized contacts between about ten members of the group scattered all over the world by means of top-secret circulars intended only for a small circle. These circulars, which are among the most important documents on the problematic history of psychoanalysis between 1934 and 1945, particularly on the problem of Freud's exclusion from the International Psychoanalytical Association of Wilhelm Reich, who was originally a member of the group. Fenichel, who in Europe because of his writings and gained a reputation as a polyhistor of psychoanalysis, and a thorough review work, "could not really gain a foothold in American society. He died shortly after the publication of his main work The Psychanalytic Theory of Neurosis". (wiki)