Emmy Sylvester

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Emmy Sylvester (born 1910 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died 1994 in San Francisco , married Pollaczek) was an Austrian-American pediatrician and psychoanalyst who emigrated to the USA after the annexation of Austria to National Socialist Germany .

Live and act

Emmy Sylvester was the daughter of Paul Arnold Sylvester and Elsa, b. Silberstern, born in Vienna. She studied psychology , philosophy and history at the University of Vienna . In 1932 she received her doctorate. phil. with an investigation into child behavior. She then studied medicine , also at the University of Vienna, and completed this course in 1937 with a medical doctorate and completed specialist training in paediatrics .

At the same time, she began a psychoanalytic training at the training institute of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association , her training analyst was Editha Sterba . As a Jew , she emigrated to the USA in 1938 and settled with her husband Frank Pollaczek (1901–1998) in Chicago , where she completed her psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.

Emmy Sylvester was involved in founding the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School of Bruno Bettelheim (Chicago) and advocated the attempt to remove severely disturbed children from traumatizing families and to care for and treat them holistically in a psychoanalytic environment. She referred to the work of the Viennese psychoanalysts Siegfried Bernfeld and August Aichhorn and participated in the development of a concept for a therapeutic milieu .

In 1951, Emmy Sylvester moved to San Francisco and taught as a professor and training analyst at Stanford Medical School and at Mount Zion Hospital and Letterman Hospital. She was a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and was widely recognized as one of the best child analysts of the post-war era.

Publications (selection)

  • The two to four year old child in a new situation. Investigation of the breadth of variation in child behavior. PhD dissertation from the University of Vienna, Vienna 1932.
  • Analysis of psychogenic anorexia in a four-year-old. The Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 1, 1945, 167-188.
  • Emotional aspects of learning. Quarterly Journal of Child Behavior 1, 1949, 133-139.
  • Discussion of techniques used to prepare young children for analysis. The Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 7, 1952, 306-321.
  • Developmental truisms and their fate in child rearing. Clinical observations.n MJE Senn: Problems of Infancy and Childhood. New York 1954, 9-37.
  • with Bruno Bettelheim: A therapeutic milieu. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 18, 1948, pp. 191-206 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1948.tb05078.x .
  • with Bruno Bettelheim: Physical symptoms in emotionally disturbed children. The Psychoanalytical Study of the Child, 1949, pp. 353-368.

literature

  • Jim Greene: Emmy Sylvester 1910-1994. Obituary. Newsletter of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society 1995, 4.
  • Elke Mühlleitner: New Year's Eve, Emmy. In Britta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2002 ISBN 978-3-20599-467-1 , pp. 722-724.
  • Laurens P. White: Emmy New Years Eve. Obituary. San Francisco Medicine, Jan 1995, p. 32.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emmy Sylvester: The two to four year old child in a new situation. Investigation of the breadth of variation in child behavior. Phil. Dissertation University of Vienna, Vienna 1932
  2. ↑ Psychoanalysts. Biographical Lexicon: Female Psychoanalysts in Austria
personal data
SURNAME New Years Eve, Emmy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Emma Maria Louise Pollaczek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 1994
Place of death San Francisco