Ben A. Finkelstein

Ben A. Finkelstein (born May 28, 1910 in Liepaja , † January 3, 1975 in Cleveland , Ohio ) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist .

Life

Ben Ami Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1935 from the University of Zurich with a thesis on white spot disease . During the Second World War he was interned in a labor camp for a while . He then worked at the Tarpeh Mental Hospital , where he researched the "Influence of immigration on the character of a person prone to madness" using a Shoah survivor from Lithuania ; In 1952 he published results that were criticized by Rakefet Zalashik for ideological omissions in 2012 .

Finkelstein worked at the Eastern State Hospital in Lexington (Kentucky) and the Lima State Hospital in Lima (Ohio) . In the 1970s, Finkelstein worked on the Rosegg (Solothurn) .

In 1957 Finkelstein published the book Psychological Sketches in the Amsterdam publishing house F. Van Rossen ; after that he published numerous articles in American journals, including in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1971 one on the suicide of Vincent van Gogh ).

Finkelstein deals, among other things, with the psychology of crime .

At a lecture evening organized by Mieczyslaw Minkowski , Finkelstein reported on the “psychology of isolated groups” within the framework of the Society for Neurology and Psychiatry .

Finkelstein corresponded a. a. with Albert Einstein and Hans Martin Sutermeister .

Fonts

• The psychology of the isolated groups. In: Swiss Journal for Psychology . 1948.
• Mental diseases in relation to Aliya . In: Harefua , 42, 124, 1952 (in Hebrew ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ben A. Finkelstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Estate (scattered stock) in the Bern Burger Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical Directory of the American Psychiatric Association. RR Bowker Company, 1968, p. 211. Restricted preview in Google book search
2. ^ Entry in the Ohio Death Index
3. ^ Jacques Picard : Switzerland and the Jews 1933–1945: Swiss anti-Semitism, Jewish defense and international migration and refugee policy. Chronos, 1994, p. 496. ISBN 3-905311-22-4
4. ↑ Rakefet Zalashik : The Unhappy Legacy: The History of Psychiatry in Palestine and Israel. Campus Verlag, 2012 p. 161-163.
5. ↑ Ben A. Finkelstein: Dysmorphophobia. In: Diseases of the nervous system. 24, pp. 365-370 (1963)
6. ↑ Ben A. Finkelstein: Offenses with no apparent motive. In: Diseases of the nervous system. 29, 310-314 (1968)
7. ↑ Zürcher Medizeschichtliche Abhandlungen , No. 227–234, 1991, p. 61.
8. ↑ See Google Scholar and PubMed
9. ↑ Ben A. Finkelstein: Van Gogh's Suicide. In: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. 218, 1971, p. 1832, doi : 10.1001 / jama.1971.03190250058036 .
10. ↑ Zürcher Medizeschichtliche Abhandlungen , No. 227–234, 1991, p. 36.
11. ↑ Three letters in the Einstein Archives Online .
12. ↑ Pencil case in the Bern Burger Library