Arno Gruen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arno Gruen (2010)

Arno Gruen (born May 26, 1923 in Berlin ; † October 20, 2015 in Zurich ) was a German - Swiss writer , psychologist and psychoanalyst . After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, he spent over 40 years in the USA, where he studied and embarked on an academic career until he returned to Europe in 1979 and from then on lived in his adopted home of Zurich.

Life

Gruen was born in Berlin in 1923 to Jewish parents.

Arno Gruen remembered one event in elementary school well into old age: he was six years old. The teacher warned his class that it was too undisciplined and decided to get a cane to punish the children. So she took her wallet out of her pocket, found a penny and asked who was going to run to the store to buy the cane. 29 forefingers shot up, except Amos. “Isn't that crazy,” he wondered even later, “everyone absolutely wanted to buy the stick they were supposed to be hit with.” In this Berlin elementary school, he found out for the first time that he was Jewish when he was seven. He was released home before religion class. His father explained to him that a distinction is made between Jews, Christians, atheists , and often between Germans and French. Arno answered astonished:

"I thought we are all human."

- Arno Gruen : thirteen years old

In 1936 the family fled from Germany, which was meanwhile ruled by National Socialism , and emigrated to the USA via Poland and Denmark . According to his own statements, the adolescent Arno took three books with him on this escape that shaped him: a lexicon , a volume with poems by Chaim Nachman Bialik, and the Jewish Bible . While fleeing, the celebration of his Bar Mitzvah took place on the Sabbath of June 6, 1936 in the Great Synagogue in Warsaw .

Gruen studied psychology in New York , opened a psychoanalytic practice in 1958 and received his doctorate in 1961 under Theodor Reik . He then worked in various professions in the USA, most recently as a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey . Since 1979 Gruen lived and practiced in Zurich.

During his time in New York, Gruen was good friends with the writer Henry Miller and claims to have been heavily influenced by him. For example, he used an autobiographical text by Miller in a psychotherapy seminar to make students aware of the alienating power of abstract thinking. Hardly any of his listeners were therefore able to actually meet Gruen's task and deal with the feelings of the narrator, the "reality of desperation" evoked in the episode quoted. "These young people were trained not to react to experiences with feeling, but by distancing themselves."

In 2001 he received the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for his book The Stranger in Us , which is awarded by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels and the City of Munich . The Geschwister-Scholl- Prize, endowed with 10,000 euros , is awarded for a book that “shows intellectual independence and is suitable for promoting civil liberty, moral, intellectual and aesthetic courage and giving important impulses to the present sense of responsibility”. The laudator was Burkhard Hirsch .

plant

Since the late 1960s Gruen has published essays on the basic themes of his thinking, which, based on Erik Erikson's concept of autonomy, deal with the development of the self . A central thought here is the postulated contradiction between autonomy and identification in the development of identity : “Perhaps we should make the difference between identity and identification clear by recognizing that identification does not form the basis for one's own identity. That identification and identity contain a contradiction because identification does not lead to the development of an autonomous, original identity ”.

The betrayal of the self appeared in 1984 . Gruen bundles his insights as a psychotherapist into a comprehensive critique of the culturally prevailing ideology of power and rule , which elevates deficient and pathological forms of subject development to normality . The common, warlike term of autonomy is based on an idea of ​​the self built on abstractions , which, in order to assert its own importance and independence , splits off one's feelings and whose supposed freedom is exhausted in the compulsion to constantly demonstrate strength and superiority to oneself and others to deliver . Successful autonomy, on the other hand, is (...) the state in which a person is in full harmony with his own feelings and needs . Where experiences of helplessness and powerlessness have to be forced as well as denied, the principle of power takes the place of the human ability to communicate and empathy, which is already inherent in the infant . The ultimately indestructible human need for autonomy, however, goes underground , where it is not directed as a failed adaptation in destructive forms against the outside world .

Gruen's work as a therapist was therefore characterized by the endeavor and the hope to uncover and free forms of original autonomy that were masked and distorted even in serious disorders. In the context of this view, he also criticized classical psychoanalysis, the basic myth of which actually confirms his reading: “This is what Oedipus really embodies: the original injury that turns into the pursuit of dominance (...) What is often called working through an Oedipus -Complex (...) applies is the liberation from scruples, the reinforcement of ambition, competition and power. The deep injuries that lead to feelings of unacceptable helplessness and fear can not really be touched in therapy that is rooted in the ideology of domination and power . "

The work Der Wahnsinn der Normalität (Realism as Illness) , published in 1987, continues the thought. Gruen asks about the influences which, in the sense of his understanding of autonomy, lead to isolation, self-alienation and a destructive attitude of mind, which at the same time is treated as so-called "normality". He sees his analysis as part of the philosophical debate about human destructiveness.

The fight for democracy was published in 2002. Gruen started writing the book in May 2001, during which time the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 took place . This event influenced the content of the book. It deals with the causes of human destructiveness and its manifold forms. → Main article : The struggle for democracy

The Stranger in Us also appeared in 2002. In it, Gruen describes how rejections / rejections by parents in early childhood can lead to a poorly developed identity . The resulting inner emptiness is often compensated by the tendency to follow strong people or ideologies, or by a simple, polarizing worldview that names an enemy as the cause of all (or at least the most important) problems. Gruen substantiates this basic pattern through cases from his own practice as well as through historical cases. In addition to "normal" criminals, he also lists Nazi giants such as Göring , Hess , Frank and Hitler .

Alienated from Life was published in 2013. Gruen writes in a preliminary remark: "This book reflects the development of my thinking, which began with betraying myself ". Gruen states: “As in Shakespeare's Hamlet, our culture accomplishes a non-being that is based on abstract thinking and denies and denies our basic empathic awareness . It's about making this the heart of our being again ”. The book is a fundamental critique of the existing civilization .

In 2014, Gruen published another essay book on the “destructive dynamic of obedience”. "Obedience means that you cannot really develop your own self," is his basic thesis, and "that you do not develop any real responsibility for yourself."

Fonts (selection)

Books
Essays
Audio books

literature

Web links

Commons : Arno Gruen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

About Arno Gruen

Essays and interviews

Videos

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Doppel-Kopf - At the table with Arno Gruen "Seelen-Denker" )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.hr-online.de
  2. ↑ Arno Gruen died at the age of 92 , NZZ , October 22, 2015
  3. ↑ Monika Schiffer: Arno Gruen: Beyond the madness of normality. Biography. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-608-94449-5 .
  4. ↑ See page 46 of the biography.
  5. ↑ Gruen (1984), p. 75 f.
  6. ^ Laudatory speech by Burkhardt Hirsch
  7. ↑ Arno Gruen: Identity, especially: "Jewish identity" . On the death of Arno Gruen , text published posthumously on Hagalil.com , October 23, 2015 (accessed January 18, 2016)
  8. ↑ See Gruen (1984), p. 17 f.
  9. ↑ Gruen (1984), p. 91
  10. ↑ See Gruen (1987), p. 157 f.
  11. ↑ Why are we so fond of obedience? The psychoanalyst on his new book Wider den Obedam , Deutschlandradio Kultur from November 24, 2014, accessed November 25, 2014
  12. ^ Publisher information on the book by Monika Schiffer: Arno Gruen
personal data
SURNAME Gruen, Arno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss writer, psychologist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 20th October 2015
Place of death Zurich