Dietmut Niedecken

Dietmut Niedecken (* 1952 ) is an analytical child and adolescent psychotherapist in private practice. She is a lecturer at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama and a professor at the Pedagogy Department at Innsbruck University .

Act

As a psychoanalyst, Dietmut Niedecken has dealt with very different topics at first glance. They include cultural-theoretical and epistemological topics as well as psychoanalytical-clinical considerations. Best known is her approach of a psychoanalytic and culturally critical theory of intellectual disability.

Beginning

Niedeckens dissertation inserts. Material and relationship figures in musical production appeared in 1988. In it, she deals with musical products in the classical music tradition as well as with music therapy improvisations. By comparing the two, she basically develops a psychoanalytic theory of musical production.

Psychoanalytic theory of intellectual disability

In 1989 the book nameless, mentally handicapped understand was published , in which she goes to the bottom of the phenomenon of mental handicap (see: mental handicap ) and develops the term “institution mentally handicapped”. She has played a key role in shaping the psychoanalytic discussion of a modified psychoanalytic treatment of the mentally handicapped by presenting her practice in psychoanalysis and music therapy . Theoretically it orientates itself u. a. to Alfred Lorenzer , Mario Erdheim , Maud Mannoni , with reference to developmental psychologists such as René Spitz , Donald W. Winnicott and others. a ..

In collaboration with Irene Lauschmann and Marlies Pötzl, the book Psychoanalytische Reflexion in der Pädagogische Praxis was published in 2003. In it, the knowledge of Namenlos is taken up again and deepened based on the description of the educational practice in residential groups.

Writings on cultural theory and epistemological criticism

In the years that followed, Niedecken turned to a topic that Sigmund Freud repeatedly picked up and repeatedly dropped: the "occult". In experiment on the occult. A psychoanalytical study (Tübingen 2001) deals with phenomena such as telepathy (mind reading), precognition (prediction of future events) and psychokinesis (non-action-mediated interrelationship with inanimate matter), which cannot be grasped within the framework of a traditional understanding of science. Niedecken summarizes them under the term “occult” in order to tie in with a hidden tradition - the marginal writings of Freud and a few of his successors who deal with the subject (see the anthology by Georges Devereux “Psychoanalysis and the Occult ", Which summarizes this work).

In the years that followed, Niedecken turned to the subject of occult phenomena, which Sigmund Freud had already taken up and repeatedly dropped, in order to show to what extent these can be conceptually grasped and demystified by psychoanalysis. She published her results in an experiment on the occult. A psychoanalytic study (Tübingen 2001). - Following the traces in Freud's work, Niedecken shows in this book that what he calls the occult played a greater role in his thinking than he made it public. However, he never gave up his enlightenment impetus and converted to a believer, as is sometimes rumored in esoteric contexts. The difficulty of reconciling what he found and recognized with his traditional scientific understanding of thought led to strong resistance, which moved him to some of his investigations (such as telepathy experiments with his friend Ferenczi, of those in the Biography “The life and work of Sigmund Freud” by Ernest Jones (see p. 437ff)) should not be made public.

Dietmut Niedecken understands the usual doubts about the reality of the occult as resistance that can be analyzed as such. She comes to the conclusion that phenomena such as telepathy force us to question our traditional understanding of the subject as “ hypokeimenon ” (Greek: underlying). It shows that although psychoanalysis has hardly dealt directly with the occult in its development since Freud - the topic was and still is rather frowned upon - it is increasingly with relationship constellations for which an experience of subjective autonomy and subject-object- Separation cannot be assumed. As Niedecken shows, the concepts developed for an understanding of such relationship constellations are not only suitable as a starting point for recording occult phenomena - rather, in the discussion about these concepts and the clinical experiences on which they are based, occult phenomena are increasingly found to be extreme symptoms, so to speak must be understood that mark a “crack in the structure” of the worldview based on the subject-object separation. The reluctance to face occult phenomena corresponds, according to Niedecken, to the dizziness that seizes us when we are forced to question the foundations of our thinking and understanding.

In a few subsequent essays (2002, 2003a, 2004, 2006), Niedecken deals with the question of how subject constitution and consciousness are connected and in what way the subject-object separation in the corpus of psychoanalytic theory - especially with Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion - is already questioned has been. She developed a concept of the priority of scenes , with which not only trance states and occult phenomena, but also widely recognized phenomena such as the transmodal perception observed by Daniel Stern in newborns or the mirror neurons recently discovered by neurobiology can be understood in psychoanalytic terms.

Influence and criticism

So far, Niedecken's work is mainly known in specialist circles. Her dissertation is still used today in the psychoanalytic theory of music therapy . Her work on intellectual disabilities has found widespread use. They are often used in practice and taken up and criticized in subsequent studies. For a long time, however, the term mentally handicapped as an institution hardly played a role; it has only recently been used more and more. For the criticism see the article on intellectual disabilities . Niedecken's more recent works on criticism of culture and knowledge are even less well known.

Works (selection)

• 1988: missions. Material and relationship figure in musical production. Hamburg: VSA.
• 1989: nameless. Understanding the mentally disabled. Munich: Piper; 4th edition: Weinheim: Beltz, 2003.
• 2001: Attempt on the occult. A psychoanalytic study . Tübingen: Discord.
• 2003: with Irene Lauschmann and Marlies Pötzl: Psychoanalytical reflection in educational practice. Internal and external integration of people with disabilities. Weinheim: Beltz.
• 2008: (Ed.) Scene and Containment. Wilfred Bion and Alfred Lorenzer. A fictional dialogue . Marburg: Tectum, ISBN 978-3-8288-9674-1 .
• 2013: with Sabine Mitzlaff: Destruction of thinking in trauma. Frankfurt: Brandes and Apsel.

Web links

• List of publications on hfmt-hamburg.academia.edu