Edmund Westrich

Edmund Westrich (born January 4, 1927 in Landstuhl ; † August 13, 2008 in Mainz ) was a German psychologist and university professor .

Life

Edmund Westrich grew up in Landstuhl. Having just turned 17, he was drafted into military service and shortly thereafter was taken prisoner. In 1945/46 he graduated from high school in Kaiserslautern . He then studied pedagogy , psychology and sociology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . In 1950 he passed his diploma examination in psychology. He then worked as a career advisor at the Kaiserslautern employment office. In 1959 he received his doctorate. phil. at the University of Mainz with Professors Mühle and Wellek .

At the end of 1959, he took over as director of the Sprachheilheim located in Werscherberg / Osnabrück (today's "Sprachheilzentrum Werscherberg"). From 1962 he headed the speech healing center in Bonn-Oberkassel as senior government councilor. At the same time, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Cologne . In 1971 Edmund Westrich was appointed professor at the Rhineland-Palatinate University of Education (EWH) in Mainz. Among other things, he built up the four-semester postgraduate course in pedagogy for the speech-impaired for teachers who are already active at primary and secondary schools. For decades he shaped teacher training in Rhineland-Palatinate in particular as part of his “language-disabled pedagogy”. At the same time as the “Institute for Special Education”, which now belongs to Johannes Gutenberg University, was moving from Mainz to Landau , Westrich retired in 1993. Edmund Westrich was married and had a daughter and a son.

plant

Westrich was primarily interested in people. To put this as a whole at the center of his considerations and not to reduce it to its linguistic phenomena was his primary goal. With his own empathy for linguistic ability, language acquisition and language promotion, he knew how to develop a holistic psychological-pedagogical concept of speech therapy both in theory and in practice (so-called "Mainz School") and thus differentiate himself from the medically oriented ones that had previously been in force To delimit thought models.

Fonts (selection)

• Attempt to monitor the success and probation of stutterers treated in inpatients. A catamnestic survey of relapsed stutterers. Cologne 1965.
• The development of drawing during puberty. Frankfurt am Main 1968.
• The young stutterer in his self-portrayal. A contribution to the psychology of human behavior. Edited by the Landschaftsverb. Rhineland, Cologne 1968.
• The stutterer. Psychology and therapy. Bonn 1974, ISBN 3-87183-112-3 .
• The stammer. The experience aspect in speech therapy. Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1974.
• with Lothar Werner and Anton Rumler: The Speech Therapist . 1st work and advanced training conference, conference report: stuttering, rhythmic music. Education of the speech impaired. Society for Speech Therapy in Vienna, Vienna 1975.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary of the German Society for Speech Therapy, accessed on December 21, 2012.
2. ^ Obituary of the German Society for Speech Therapy, accessed on December 21, 2012.