Erich Guttmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erich Guttmann , later also known as Eric Guttmann (born March 5, 1896 in Gleiwitz , † April 25, 1948 in London ) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist .

Life and activity

After studying medicine, Guttmann worked from 1925 to 1931 as an assistant in the clinical department at the German Research Institute for Psychiatry at the Munich-Schwabing Hospital. From 1929 to 1933 he taught as a private lecturer at the University of Munich .

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Guttmann moved to Great Britain. There he found a job with the help of a research grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1934 as an employee of the Research Department (Department of Clinical Research) at Maudsley Hospital in London. This was under the direction of the psychiatrist Mapother. One of his colleagues there was the Scottish psychiatrist Walter Maclay , who was his research partner in the following years. Both researched together and created the so-called Guttmann-Maclay Collection , a collection of books and pictures about the relationship between art and psychopathology, which is kept in Maudsley Hospital to this day. Together with Wilhelm Mayer-Gross , who also emigrated from Germany, he examined the psychopathology of the brains of the mentally handicapped . Guttmann devoted himself to researching the effects of the consumption of mescaline on human perception - also in self- experiments .

Around 1936 Guttmann changed his first name to Eric.

In 1940, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War - he was still formally a German citizen - Guttmann was temporarily interned as a member of an enemy power, but was released again in 1941 - as he had been classified as harmless. From 1941 until the end of the war he worked at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.

After his emigration, the National Socialist police officers classified Guttmann as an enemy of the state: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who would be succeeded by the occupying forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

Fonts

  • "Congenital Arithmetic Disability and Acalculia (Henschen)", in: British Journal of Medical Psychology , Vol. 15-17 (1935-1937), pp. 16-35.,
  • "Artificial Psychoses Produced by Mescaline", in: Journal of Mental Science , Vol. 82 (1936), pp. 203-211
  • "Observations on Benzedrine", in: British Medical Journal , vol. 1 (May 15, 1937), pp. 1013-1015 (with William Sargant)
  • Psychological Medicine. A Short Introduction to Psychiatry. With an Appendix - War-Time Psychiatry , 1943. (with Desmond Curran)

Under the name Eric Guttmann:

  • Clinical Observations on Schizophrenic Drawings , 1937. (with WS Maclay)
  • Psychological Medicine. A Short Introduction to Psychiatry , 1944.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry on Guttmann on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).
personal data
SURNAME Guttmann, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guttmann, Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Gliwice
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1948
Place of death London