Dieter Wyss

Dieter Wyss (1983)

Dieter Wyss (born December 21, 1923 in Addis Ababa ; † July 6, 1994 San Carlos , Ibiza ) was a German psychiatrist , psychotherapist and professor of medical psychology and psychotherapy at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg . He taught anthropological psychology and psychopathology .

Live and act

Dieter Wyss was the only son of the diplomat and orientalist Max Friedrich Weiss and the writer Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg . His father worked in Addis Ababa as the German envoy, where Dieter Wyss was born and spent his early childhood. Wyss first studied medicine and philosophy in Berlin and Rostock and completed his studies in Heidelberg in 1948. He then became Viktor von Weizsäcker's assistant and dealt with psychosomatic medicine . He was trained in anthropologically oriented psychiatry with Jürg Zutt . Then he worked as a neurologist and psychotherapist .

From 1969 to 1989 he was full professor for medical psychology and psychotherapy at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and head of the at the time, first in the basement of the university building at Sanderring 2, then in the AOK building on Kardinal-Faulhaber-Platz and from autumn 1971 Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology, located in Klinikgasse (today Klinikstrasse) 3, which emerged from the chair and, since 1952, the Institute for Anthropology and Hereditary Biology . The foundations for this were created by Viktor Emil Freiherr von Gebsattel , who had received a teaching assignment for medical psychology and psychotherapy in 1950 and who until 1960 created the first chair for medical psychology . The original Chair for Hereditary Science and Race Research, which was held by Gebsattel, was renamed the Chair for Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy in 1965.

Wyss was a co-founder of the German Society for Anthropological and Existential Medicine, Psychology and Psychotherapy . For several years he was its president and later its honorary president. He further developed the anthropological thinking, which he had taken up as an employee of Viktor von Weizsäcker and as the chair of Viktor Emil von Gebsattel , whose anthropological-existence-analytical direction he continued and expanded with practical therapy options. In addition to his specialist publications, Wyss has published four volumes of poetry, a book on surrealism and a book on love . He died after a short, serious illness in San Carlos on Ibiza, where he had retired after his retirement. His final resting place is in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf near Berlin.

Teaching

Dieter Wyss in his library

Man and world

Wyss interprets life as a whole of meaning that relates to the world , man and society : “In the constitution of the spatial / temporal reference and fixed point through turning to the world, man designs himself into it. As a draft it is unfinished, oriented towards the future, open to the possible it becomes the shape that the temporal course of its life will take. [...] The world that shows itself and the interior that presents itself are dependent on the subject's design in terms of showing and presenting itself - whether unambiguous or indistinct, possible or necessary. In the manner of its reference, the subject decides whether the horizon of the world or that of its inner being should generally remain an indistinct and possible one or whether it stands out clearly in details. The possible of the world or the inside is thus determined - according to the model of the perception and cognitive process - in the way they are shown by the reference and fixed point of the subject. However, since referring to oneself, fixing oneself is always a commitment to what means something to the self-relating person, at the moment in which the subject designs and defines himself in perspective, the periphery outside the reference and fixed point becomes the horizon of the possible again. The possible is therefore a constitutive constitution of the world and within. It is inextricably linked with the constitution of the subject, the way it is turned. The world as possible of possibilities is [...] the design towards the infinity of time, which, as aperspectival duration, can make everything possible once. "

Communication as compensation

According to Wyss, illness is the inability to communicate with the world through the various modes of affection and at the various levels of "being in the world", in fact a manifestation of latent decompensations. Wyss sees the subject as related a priori to exchange and communication . Wyss is of the opinion that “everything living is based on a fundamental defect, most radical and clearest in humans. This irreversible deficiency has resulted in a need for communication: By communicating, people compensate for the deficiency. Every compensation , every satisfaction remains, of course, only fragmentary and causes a conflictual nature of human existence that cannot be eliminated. For Wyss, communication as a human being is essentially a conflict that can lead to 'restrictions' or 'extensions'. From this point of view, illness is communication impairment or even loss of communication. On the other hand, successful psychotherapy brings about an expansion of communication. "

Disintegration of man

The hominids considered Wyss as predatory monkeys. He sees a common root for evil and human psychopathies : the " evolutionary disintegration of humans". This is the reason for the break-in and the perception of transcendence , but also for the possibility of decompensation in psychopathies. In humans, disintegration manifests itself psychologically in both inhibiting-suppressing and increasing-complementary psychological structures that make people appear a priori as conflict-determined: the intellect versus the emotionality, the drives with or against impulses of will, the tension between emotionality and rationality . Decompensation has occurred "when the measure (balance) of bodily and subjective-individual behavior and that of the world relating to body and subject no longer supports exchange and / or communication between the two, when it collapses".

Man is a poorly compensated, disintegrated higher predatory monkey. He creates “in the execution of his development his work and cultural worlds and their ubiquitous structure that seduces one-sidedness and thus disease (psychopathy) as well as facilitating them: z. B. in a fear-related orientation, in a narcissistic body-relatedness, in an exorbitant performance claim. "For the psychopathology taught by Wyss , domination and vengeance are just as relevant as a one-sided, life-determining performance or ideological orientation. However, the one-sidedness of an extreme reference to benefits presupposes motivation from another person or from several seekers . The extreme reference to performance presupposes the lust for power . A specifically ideological orientation is often linked with a lust for validity or power. According to Wyss, both forms of one-sidedness are based on selfishness .

The ideal type of the healthy

According to Wyss, the healthy person is characterized by the ability to exist in different relationships and to be able to communicate on several levels. In reality, the ideal type of the healthy only exists as a possible approximation. The healthy to acknowledge the flexibility between the assets for self-assertion and adaptation. In social impulses he behaves towards you, without falling for the other or wanting to manipulate him. He is neither at the mercy of his instincts nor is his life subject to a one-sided instinctual direction. According to Wyss, the healthy person is “able to follow the selection of impulses that is socially and by the structure of being-in-the-world, that is, he is able to renounce without becoming resignedly lonely through renunciation. He is neither one-sidedly turned away from life intellectually, nor one-sidedly willed. Will, action and to intervene in the perceived world that is being shown correspond to one another for him. He does not allow his actions to be guided by (ideal) expectations with which he always criticizes himself and his environment to their exclusive disadvantage. He is aware of the limits of the realization of every ideal, as he also knows that a restoration of the lost, primary identity is not possible, that every search for identity has the character of madness: identity , as that which is identical to itself only in logic, but is not found in life. ”In turning to the world through desires and feelings, the healthy person is neither caught up in the belief in the omnipotence of his desires, nor has he given up all desires in a resigned and apathetic manner. He knows how to keep his wishes in line with the respective social reality and not to wish what is impossible. In feeling , the healthy person is intensely able to feel himself, as well as the world and the others, to perceive it, to let himself be felt, but without sinking into emotions. “His sensitivities should be controllable, but he should not remain completely unaffected by them, since they are part of his being-in-the-world. He knows about the possibility of the possible, his irrational intrusions, without fear of it or wanting to protect himself against it in a precautionary, exaggerated and fearful manner. Turning towards and away from the world and towards people take place in harmony with the world as it appears and the feeling perception of it, that is, guided by sympathy and antipathy , without these exclusively determining his actions and cognition, rather they agree with his Judgment from. ”The relationship of the healthy to the body and to eros is friendly and value-positive. "He knows that the positive relationship with the body is a relationship with the creative and creative 'power of being there', which enables him to be productive, imaginative and differentiate human relationships, even in play."

Publications

Scientific writings (selection)

• The surrealism. A pathography of modern art . Stiehm Verlag, Heidelberg 1950.
• (with Viktor von Weizsäcker ) Between medicine and philosophy . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1957.
• The depth psychology schools from the beginning to the present. Development, problems, crises . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1961 (6th supplemented edition, ibid., 1991, ISBN 3-525-45731-6 )
• Structures of morality . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968. - 2nd edition 1970.
• Marx and Freud. Your relationship to modern anthropology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969.
• Textbook of medical psychology and psychotherapy for students . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971.
• Relationship and shape. Draft of an anthropological psychology and psychopathology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973.
• Love as a learning process . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1975.
• Communication and reply. Studies on the biology, psychology and psychopathology of communication . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976.
• Between logos and anti-logos. Investigations on the teaching of hermeneutics and natural sciences, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980.
• The sick person as a partner. Textbook of anthropological-integrative psychotherapy . 2 volumes, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986.
• New ways in psychosomatic medicine . 3 volumes:
  • Volume 1: From destroyed to rediscovered life. Critique of Modern Biology. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986.
  • Volume 2: Sick life - sick body. From an organism-appropriate biology to a psychosomatic pathophysiology. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986.
  • Volume 3: The psychosomatic patient. Between crises and failure. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987.
• Dream consciousness? Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-525-45695-6 .
• Psychology and religion. Investigations into the originality of religious experience. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1991.
• The philosophy of chaos or the irrational. The purpose of man in an irrational world . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1992.
• Cain. A phenomenology and psychopathology of evil. Documents and interpretation . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1997.

Fiction works (selection)

• Dance through infrared . Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1953.
• Sleeping suns . Eremiten-Presse, Frankfurt / Main 1953.
• Nadir . Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1968.
• The odyssey in the cyclone . With 19 linocuts by Rudolf Scharpf . Lambert Schneider, Heidelberg 1983.
• Einstein saves the world. Surreal through science and politics . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994.

literature

• Herbert Csef (Ed.): Loss of meaning and finding meaning in health and illness. Commemorative script in honor of Dieter Wyss. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1998.
• Wyss, Dieter. In: German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition. Vol. 10 (2008), p. 775 f. ( online ).
• Burkhard Schmidt, Karl-Ernst Bühler: Brief outline of the history of the Würzburg University Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 927-933; here: p. 928 ff.

Web links

• Literature by and about Dieter Wyss in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Burkhard Schmidt, Karl-Ernst Bühler: Brief outline of the history of the Würzburg University Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 927–933, here: pp. 927– 929.
2. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3; also dissertation Würzburg 1995), ISBN 3-88479-932-0 , pp. 23 and 197–199.
3. ^ Burkhard Schmidt, Karl-Ernst Bühler: Brief outline of the history of the Würzburg University Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. 1982, pp. 927-933, here: pp. 929 and 933.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Herrmann Lang: The sick person as a partner. On the death of the psychotherapist Dieter Wyss . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 18, 1994, no. 164 , 1994, pp. 26 .
5. ↑ Dieter Wyss: Relationship and Shape. Draft of an anthropological psychology and psychopathology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, p. 258 f.
6. ^ Burkhard Schmidt, Karl-Ernst Bühler: Brief outline of the history of the Würzburg University Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. 1982, pp. 927-933; cited here: p. 931 f.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Wyss: Cain: a phenomenology and psychopathology of evil . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1997, p. 139 .
8. ↑ Dieter Wyss: Kain: a phenomenology and psychopathology of evil . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1997, p. 138 .
9. ↑ Dieter Wyss: Kain: a phenomenology and psychopathology of evil . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1997, p. 140 .
10. ↑ ^{a b} Dieter Wyss: Relationship and Shape. Draft of an anthropological psychology and psychopathology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, p. 455
11. ↑ Dieter Wyss: Relationship and Shape. Draft of an anthropological psychology and psychopathology . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, p. 456