Johannes Cremerius

Johannes Cremerius (born May 16, 1918 in Moers ; † March 15, 2002 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was an important German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in the Freudian tradition , at the same time "one of the most committed critics of institutionalized psychoanalysis" and a champion of psychosomatic medicine and Interdisciplinarity .

Cremerius' books The Confusions of the Zöglings T. and Vom Handwerk des Psychoanalysts were included in the list of 100 masterpieces in psychotherapy.

Childhood and youth

Johannes Cremerius, son of Johann, machinist in the ironworks in Rheinhausen, grew up in Uerdingen in a strictly Protestant family. Even at high school he was particularly interested in German, history, religion and languages. At times he had contact with the Nerother Wandervogel , which was banned in 1933. The young Cremerius was well read and gradually turned to Freudian psychoanalysis. Cremerius was not drafted immediately when the war began in 1939, but was able to spend several semesters in Freiburg i. Br. Started studying medicine until 1941 at the University of Pavia in Italy. There he had contact with the Italian Resistance . The degree was completed in 1944 in Freiburg i. Br. In October 1944 he was posted to the Eastern Front, where he witnessed the retreat as a hospital doctor. Via Danzig he managed to escape to Kiel, where he was taken prisoner by the English, which he spent as a volunteer military doctor on a minesweeper flying the English flag on the Baltic Sea. In October 1945 he was released from captivity and returned to Uerdingen. In 1946 he married his long-time student friend Annemarie Stolz from Freiburg i. Br.

Professional development

In 1946 he began training as a specialist in the Düsseldorf-Grafenberg Clinic. Between 1946 and 1948, Cremerius broadened his professional horizons by attending the lectures of Franz Sioli and studying psychiatric literature. In 1948 he finished his specialist training and received an offer from a Munich institute under Walter Seitz. In addition to his professional career, Johannes Cremerius and his wife were interested in art and cultivated contact and friendships with well-known artists such as Ewald Mataré , Otto Dix , Hermann Teuber , Karl Hofer and Ferdinand Macketanz . The rise of psychoanalytically oriented psychosomatic medicine after the war is closely linked to his name. He had worked at the University of Giessen in collaboration with Thure von Uexküll and Horst-Eberhard Richter , then as the first director of the newly founded Psychosomatic University Clinic in Freiburg i. Br. Until his retirement in 1993. Together with Gaetano Benedetti , he founded the Institute for Psychoanalytic Therapy in Milan in 1970 , an alternative training institute free of hierarchical structures and institutional guidelines, in which he worked after his retirement. He strove for innovative further development of psychoanalysis as well as interdisciplinary cooperation. Cremerius represented a psychoanalysis that was based on Freud's enlightenment ethos and was characterized by strong political commitment.

His writings include works on assessing the success of treatment in psychotherapy, on the reception of psychoanalysis in sociology, psychology and theology, on the theory and practice of psychosomatic medicine and, above all, the monumental collection of a practitioner: Vom Handwerk des Analytikers (2 vols., 1984). Cremerius was highly innovative. In Munich he founded an advice center for concentration camp victims. In Freiburg the forum “Psychoanalysis and Literature” with the widely acclaimed “Freiburg Literature Psychological Talks” was closely linked to his name.

In terms of genealogy and its impulse, psychoanalysis belonged to him in the context of the great European Enlightenment, of which Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx were genuine heirs . But for the practicing Lichtenbergian, it was not only about the ethos of the Enlightenment, but also about the pleasure experienced in and in the analytical process.

Johannes Cremerius has worked in Munich , the USA and Zurich , among others .

Publications

• Working reports from psychoanalytic practice , Tübingen 1998
• On the craft of the psychoanalyst , autobiography (2 vols.), 1984

literature

• Johannes Cremerius: A life as a psychoanalyst in Germany. Edited by Wolfram Mauser with the participation of Astrid Lange-Kirchheim, Joachim Pfeiffer, Carl Pietzcker and Petra Strasser. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2005. ISBN 3-8260-3295-0
• Martin Kumnig, Johannes Cremerius , in: Stumm / Pritz et al .: Personal Lexicon of Psychotherapy , Vienna, New York 2005, 96f

Lectures

• Money in a therapeutic setting , Lindau texts on the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks 1994, pp. 222–233 Springer-Verlag 1995 (PDF)
• Personal change as a prerequisite for psychotherapy , Lindau texts on the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks 1990, pp. 88–99 Springer-Verlag 1991 (PDF)

Web links

• Obituary in the NZZ
• Literature by and about Johannes Cremerius in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A psychoanalytic educator, review by Ludger Lütkehaus
2. ^ Alfred Pritz (ed.): One hundred masterpieces of psychotherapy. Vienna, New York 2008, pp. 42–46
3. ^ A life as a psychoanalyst in Germany, ISBN 3-8260-3295-0