Alfred Lorenzer

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Alfred Lorenzer (born April 8, 1922 in Ulm ; † June 26, 2002 near Perugia , Italy) was a German psychoanalyst and sociologist . Lorenzer is considered a pioneer of interdisciplinary psychoanalysis, since he always wanted to have psychological as well as biological and sociological dimensions taken into account in the science of humans, especially psychoanalysis.

biography

Alfred Lorenzer was born in Ulm in 1922, where he also went to school. After graduating from high school , he began studying architecture , but soon switched to medicine. After graduating, Lorenzer specialized in the field of psychiatry, did his doctorate in Tübingen under Ernst Kretschmer in 1954 and turned to psychoanalysis there as a senior physician. From 1960 to 1963 he worked at the psychosomatic clinic of the University of Heidelberg, headed by Alexander Mitscherlich , where he received a psychoanalytic training, then from 1963 to 1969 in Frankfurt at the Sigmund Freud Institute , which Mitscherlich had taken over. Here Lorenzer took the decisive steps to develop his own theoretical approach, a combination of psychoanalysis and sociology, and completed his habilitation in 1969 at the Philosophical Faculty of the Frankfurt University of Psychology, in particular psychoanalysis and social psychology.

Appointed to a professorship for social psychology in Bremen in 1971, Lorenzer returned to Frankfurt in 1974 and took over a chair for sociology at the university with a focus on socialization theory. Until 1992 he worked as a training and control analyst. Massively restricted by serious illness since 1990, Alfred Lorenzer died on June 26, 2002 in his summer house in Umbria . Among his students is the social psychologist Bernard Görlich .

plant

Crossing borders, as shown in Lorenzer's biography, also shaped his scientific work. Already in his dissertation he questioned the relationship between disposition and socialization influence. Lorenzer himself sketched his further path into the 1970s:

“I had a number of years of psychiatry behind me, but had left it and completed psychoanalytic training because psychiatry was so completely at a loss when faced with the great traumas of that time. Eager to find the riddle of the traumatic neurosis solved in psychoanalysis, I soon came across a limit of which I realized: the solution could only be found in the opening of psychoanalysis to critical theory . "

- Alfred Lorenzer : In the middle of the argument .

The meeting with Klaus Horn was particularly significant ; in him he found a stimulating discussion partner and friend. Both were united by their scientific commitment to analytical social psychology . The discussions with other scientists at the Sigmund Freud Institute, including Jürgen Habermas, were also important . Lorenzer presented the draft of his habilitation thesis, to which Habermas, for example, refers in knowledge and interest . In 1970 Lorenzer's study was published, divided into two books: Critique of the Psychoanalytic Concept of Symbols and Language Destruction and Reconstruction .

Lorenzer's work can be roughly divided into three epochs: the early writings on trauma theory (essays around 1966–1969 and 1972), the middle epoch, which was devoted to elaborating his metatheory of psychoanalysis (publications 1970–1974), and his epoch cultural analytical studies (from 1981).

Early writings on trauma theory

In the German psychoanalysis of the 1960s, there was generally a deep silence regarding the topic of trauma, although the consequences of the traumatic experiences caused by National Socialism were omnipresent. Lorenzer's early writings are an astonishing exception. Werner Bohleber writes:

“His works stand like a solitaire in the landscape of German psychoanalysis. Hardly any of the German psychoanalysts dealt with the trauma and its massive spread in the German population at that time [.] "

- Werner Bohleber : Alfred Lorenzer's work on traumatic neurosis .

As one of the first ever, and for a long time the only German psychoanalyst, Lorenzer also dealt with the consequences of the Holocaust . He wanted to understand how external influences translate into internal structures or structural destruction. On the basis of this question, he realized that psychoanalysis was not able to adequately grasp the relationship between social and psychological reality simply because of its special procedure and its special perspective. The restriction to the dynamics and structure of the inner soul reality made, he concluded, a metatheory necessary, through which an interdisciplinary discourse with the social sciences becomes possible.

Writings on the metatheory of psychoanalysis

Lorenzer's main work, which he published in books between 1970 and 1974, is devoted to the development of this metatheory of psychoanalysis and the connection of the psychoanalytical to the social and human scientific discourse. The work in this phase is again divided into investigations on psychoanalysis as a critical-hermeneutical procedure, on the subject of psychoanalysis and on the epistemological status of psychoanalytic knowledge.

Psychoanalysis as a critical hermeneutical procedure

Lorenzer's interest in knowledge was directed towards forms of damaged life, whereby he placed the connection between drive and society, sensuality and relationship at the center. So he counters an idealistically abbreviated understanding of psychoanalysis:

“The motor of the psychoanalytical knowledge process is therefore not the interest in self-reflection, but sensual experience of suffering that calls for abolition. […] Psychoanalysis as a critical-hermeneutical procedure draws its impulse from the unbearable real situation of the subjects, it lives from 'contradiction' and also aims at nothing else […] than to transform blindly experienced consequences of contradiction into conscious experience. "

- Alfred Lorenzer : On the subject of psychoanalysis or: Language and interaction .

The result of Lorenzer's intention to reformulate psychoanalysis as a “critical theory of the subject” is his theory of forms of interaction: From the bodily processes of need satisfaction arise in the social interplay of early childhood forms of interaction patterns for the personality. When they are obtained in language, these are later integrated into a network of general rules (and thus socialized), and also symbolically available to the subject, accessible for reflection. If there is no connection between the behavioral formula and language, or if this connection is later destroyed in the conflict, neurotic deformations arise, the meaning of which the analyst can grasp with " scenic understanding " and which he can work on together with the patient.

Objects of psychoanalysis

Lorenzer emphasized the distinction between the subject of psychoanalysis and its subject of knowledge . The object of investigation is the "story", concrete descriptions of experiences. These form the psychological foundation, the database from which psychoanalysis approaches its object of knowledge.

The "psychoanalytic object of knowledge" is described by Lorenzer, referring to Freud, as standing between anatomical neurophysiology and social-scientific theory of action and belonging to both systems of knowledge. Psychoanalysis is on the one hand about intimate conflicts and interpersonal relationships, on the other hand it is also about “physically immediate experience programs”, “neural formulas” and “genetic anchoring in instinctual fates”, which constitutes the indissoluble intermediate position of psychoanalysis between sociology and neurology .

Accordingly, the structure of psychoanalysis is characterized by a twofold tension:

" 1. from the tension between the object of investigation and the object of knowledge, and
2. within the object of knowledge from the tension between social science and physiology."

Psychoanalysis and cultural theory

In the last decade of his scientific work, Lorenzer's particular interest was in the field of sensual-symbolic expression, the field of cultural symbols - especially images, sounds and literature - in which new, socially unacceptable modes of experience are put up for debate. Making scenic understanding usable for cultural analysis was his concern in the book The Council of Accountants (1981). With the extensive essay Deep Hermeneutical Cultural Analysis he submitted the methodological foundation for this in 1986 and described his approach, which he also referred to as psychoanalytical-depth hermeneutic, in contrast to the classical psychoanalytic literary interpretation: "It's about the hidden meaning of a literary text".

At the same time, Lorenzer was fascinated by the results of current neurophysiological research, through which he hoped for clarification and material foundations for many questions of psychoanalytic metatheory, as he had already established in Freud's “hope for a future neurophysiological formulation of soul processes”. His series of lectures held in Costa Rica in the mid-1980s , in which he devoted a great deal of space to these questions, appeared under the title Die Sprache, der Sinn, das Unconscious in 2002 shortly before his death.

Influence and criticism

In the 1970s, Lorenzer's works were very well recognized among sociologists and philosophers alike. In psychoanalysis, however, the reception was very hesitant, and when Lorenzer was no longer able to actively participate in scientific discourse due to his serious illness, his works lost much of their influence.

Lorenzer was accused of being too abstract and difficult to understand and of not being relevant enough for the psychoanalytic clinic. However, it was overlooked that Lorenzer's claim was interdisciplinary, which made a higher degree of abstraction necessary.

In recent years, Siegfried Zepf and Dietmut Niedecken, two authors who tie in with Lorenzer's work and continue it in different ways, have distinguished themselves . In his comprehensive textbook General Psychoanalytic Neuroses, Psychosomatics and Social Psychology (2000, 2006), Zepf continued and critically supplemented Lorenzer's theory of forms of interaction. His aim is to redefine the metapsychological terms of psychoanalysis in the light of Lorenzer's theory of interaction, and to work out their clinical relevance. Niedecken's approach is different. She takes on outsider issues: intellectual disabilities and what Freud calls "the occult". And it shows how Lorenzer's theory can create new orientation in such taboo topics.

Works

  • Critique of the psychoanalytic concept of symbols . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Speech destruction and reconstruction. Preparatory work for a metatheory of psychoanalysis . Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • To justify a materialistic theory of socialization . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • About the subject of psychoanalysis or: language and interaction . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973.
  • The truth of psychoanalytic knowledge. A historical-materialistic design . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974.
  • Language game and forms of interaction. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-518-07681-7 .
  • The Council of Accountants. The destruction of sensuality. A criticism of religion . European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-434-00435-1 .
  • Intimacy and social suffering. Archeology of Psychoanalysis . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-10-045306-9 .
  • The language, the meaning, the unconscious. Basic psychoanalytic understanding and neuroscience . Edited by Ulrike Prokop . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-608-94354-4 .
  • Scenic understanding. To the knowledge of the unconscious . Edited by Ulrike Prokop and Bernard Görlich . Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-8288-8934-4 .

literature

  • Henning Salling Olesen (Ed.): Cultural Analysis & In-Depth Hermeneutics. In: Historical Social Research 38, No. 2, 2013, pp. 7–157.
  • Leithäuser, Thomas (2013). Psychoanalysis, Socialization and Society - The Psychoanalyticial Thought and Interpretation of Alfred Lorenzer. In: Historical Social Research 38, No. 2, 2013, pp. 56-70.
  • Olesen, Henning Salling and Kirsten Weber (2013): Socialization, Language, and Scenic Understanding. Alfred Lorenzer's Contribution to a Psycho-Societal Methodology. In: Historical Social Research 38, No. 2, 2013, pp. 26-55.
  • Josef Rattner : Alfred Lorenzer . In: Josef Rattner: Classics of depth psychology . Psychologie-Verlags-Union, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-621-27102-3 , pp. 605-627.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: In the middle of the argument . In: H.-J. Busch / H. Deserno (Ed.): Materials from the Sigmund Freud Institute Frankfurt 2: Social research and psychoanalysis as a repoliticizing practice. Klaus Horn in memory . Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 53.
  2. ↑ Werner Bohleber: Alfred Lorenzer's work on traumatic neurosis . In: Hans-Joachim Busch / Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber / Ulrike Prokop (eds.): Language, meaning and the unconscious. For the 80th birthday of Alfred Lorenzer . Ed. Diskord, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-89295-732-0 ( Psychoanalytic contributions from the Sigmund Freud Institute 10).
  3. ^ Alfred Lorenzer: On the subject of psychoanalysis or: Language and interaction . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 142 and 146.
  4. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: Deep Hermeneutic Culture Analysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 11–98, here especially p. 14 f.
  5. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: Deep Hermeneutic Culture Analysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 11–98, here mainly pp. 12–14.
  6. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: Deep Hermeneutic Culture Analysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 11–98, here p. 15.
  7. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: Deep Hermeneutic Culture Analysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 11–98. See introduction. Alfred Lorenzer and the perspectives of a cross-border psychoanalysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer: Scenic understanding. To the knowledge of the unconscious . Edited by Ulrike Prokop and Bernard Görlich. Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-8288-8934-4 (Kulturanalysen, Vol. 1), pp. 7–11, here p. 8.
  8. ^ Alfred Lorenzer: Foreword by the editor . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 7–9, here p. 7.
  9. ^ Alfred Lorenzer: Foreword by the editor . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 7–9, here p. 9.
  10. ↑ Alfred Lorenzer: Deep Hermeneutic Culture Analysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer (ed.): Culture analyzes . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, pp. 11–98, here p. 12.
  11. ↑ Cf. Frank Dirkopf, Philipp Soldt: Soul without a subject. More than an obituary. On the death of Alfred Lorenzer and on the death (s) of critical thinking about the subject. In: Friday July 29 , 2002, accessed October 17, 2012 . See introduction. Alfred Lorenzer and the perspectives of a cross-border psychoanalysis . In: Alfred Lorenzer: Scenic understanding. To the knowledge of the unconscious . Edited by Ulrike Prokop and Bernard Görlich. Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-8288-8934-4 (Kulturanalysen, Vol. 1), pp. 7–11, here p. 10.
  12. ↑ Dietmut Niedecken: nameless. Understanding the mentally disabled. A book for psychologists and parents . Piper, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-492-03314-8 ; Dietmut Niedecken / Irene Lauschmann / Marlies Pötzl: Psychoanalytic reflection in educational practice. Internal and external integration of people with disabilities . Beltz, Weinheim 2003, ISBN 3-407-57202-6 .
  13. ↑ Dietmut Niedecken: Experiment on the occult. A psychoanalytic study . Ed. Diskord, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-89295-715-0 .
personal data
SURNAME Lorenzer, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychoanalyst and sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Ulm , Germany
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 2002
Place of death Perugia , Italy