Manifestations of the soul
Manifestations of the soul is the title of the book edition of the complete works of the neurologist and psychiatrist Oskar Kohnstamm . It was published by his family in Munich in 1927 ten years after his death.
Preface
One of the special features of this work is that it contains almost 30 pages of foreword - written by three good friends of Oskar Kohnstamm: GR Heyer , Rudolf Laudenheimer and Karl Wolfskehl . Laudenheimer writes in his foreword:
“The need for methodical observation and treatment soon resulted in the fact that individual patients were initially housed in the doctor's own house and later in a rented guesthouse. Then a spa hotel was built under the medical management of Kohnstamm, and from these beginnings a separate sanatorium grew organically and necessarily, in which only the purely medical and clinical aspects were decisive. A letter from that time in which Oskar Kohnstamm jokingly told me how at the edge of the forest, in the face of his beloved castle ruins, 'the sanatorium of his mood' was being set up, finally reflects the happy mood in which the prospect puts him All inhibitions outside of the doctor are released to realize his ideals of physical and mental treatment of the sick. "
Extract from the theses on art theory
“In some incomprehensible way, the individual is an organ of the whole. (...) As an organ of community life, we especially know language with him (the human being), the written record of which becomes a means of tradition to unite the present, future and past. In addition to the purposeful one, which culminates in science, there is an expressive tradition, art, in which the artist responsibly confronts eternity, 'The real thing remains untouched for posterity.'
This responsibility as a determining tendency is the moral requirement for the artist's expressive activity (...). Art as an expressive activity and as a bonding agent for the community also has the following in common with physical expression: Similar to the way in which a uniform affect forces the expression and experience of the same emotional drive and thereby creates an expressive unity of the organism - as in an orchestra - so the, Feelings triggered by artistic expression bring human society together into an organism of a higher order ”. (From: "To what extent is there a free will for the medical and educational influence of the will"; ibid., P. 198, p. 574: based on an article from 1914 p. 198)
review
Walther Amelung writes about the work “manifestations of the soul”: “Since the beginning of this century, most recently with Max Friedemann, the focus of the investigations has been on psychological and psychopathological problems, including 'pathogenesis and psychotherapy of Graves disease with a critique of psychoanalytic research'. 'Hypnotic treatment of menstrual disorders', 'Discussion of Freudian psychoanalysis', works on the theory of expression. In about 150 pages, K. finally presented 'The doctrine of hypnotic self-reflection and the deepest subconscious'.
Kohnstamm dealt with Freudian psychoanalysis essentially from the experience of large practical investigations of his patients. It seemed too simple, too intellectual. The ethicist protested against Freud's 'drive mathematics' and 'sexual democracy'. He wanted to heal from the natural psychic powers of the human being, also with an 'appeal' to the patient's 'health conscience' (see also Heyer). In today's psychiatry and psychotherapy, the name Kohnstamm seems to be forgotten. Only in larger works such as JH Schultz 'Seelische Krankenmedizin', 1920, K. Jaspers ' Allgemeine Psychopathologie ', 1946, and especially in the contributions by B. Stokvis ' Suggestion' and by K. Häfner 'The Conscience of Neurosis' in the' Handbuch der Neurosenlehre und Psychotherapie ', 1959, Urban and Schwarzenberg, Munich, there are brief references to the research results of Kohnstamm. ”(page 142 f.)
reception
Katharina Kippenberg dealt intensively with Kohnstamm's writings on questions of free will and the hypnotic method and exchanged ideas with Johannes R. Becher and Rainer Maria Rilke between 1917 and 1919 .
literature
- Walther Amelung: "Be it as it may, it was so beautiful - life memories as contemporary history", Königstein im Taunus, 1984