Fritz Morgenthaler

Fritz Morgenthaler ( July 19, 1919 in Oberhofen am Thunersee in the canton of Bern - October 26, 1984 in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia ) was a Swiss doctor, psychoanalyst , author , juggler and painter . Alongside Georges Devereux, Morgenthaler was one of the founders of ethnopsychoanalysis and a co-founder of the Psychoanalytical Seminar in Zurich .

Life stations

Morgenthaler was born in Switzerland as the second son of the impressionist painter Ernst Morgenthaler and his wife Sasha Morgenthaler-von Sinner , attended elementary school in Paris and graduated from high school in Zurich. He completed his medical studies in Zurich in 1945. He then headed the post-war medical aid department in Prijedor (Yugoslavia) as part of the Swiss donation . From 1946 to 1951 he worked at the Neurological University Polyclinic in Zurich and trained in psychoanalysis with Rudolf Brun. After a year of assistance in Paris, he opened an analytical practice in Zurich together with Paul Parin and Goldy Parin-Matthèy in 1952 and gradually took on functions in therapeutic and analytical institutions. He made a significant contribution to the democratization and autonomization of the Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis and began to teach - especially in Switzerland and in numerous Italian cities. Between 1954 and 1971 he undertook six research trips to West Africa with his wife Ruth and the Parin couple and developed ethno- psychoanalysis with the Parins . In 1979/80 he went on a research trip with his son Marco and the ethnologists Florence Weiss and Milan Stanek to the Sepik area in Papua New Guinea . Numerous other trips, mostly with his wife, took him to Asia, Australia and all of Latin America. Morgenthaler was a trained juggler and was also successful as a painter with a dozen exhibitions. He died in Ethiopia in 1984.

Work biography

Morgenthaler became internationally known as a psychoanalyst through his ethnological-analytical studies with the Agni and Dogon in West Africa in the 1960s, which he carried out together with Paul Parin (1916–2009) and Goldy Parin-Matthèy (1911–1997) published.

His pragmatically oriented technique (1978) has become a standard work of critical self-reflection for the analyst; Morgenthaler's image of neurosis as a plug on a seething cauldron or of perversion as a seal in the disturbed self for the first time very conclusively described the functionality of mental disorders for many. Morgenthaler was also the first psychoanalyst who freed homosexuality from the basic stigma of illness or mental disorder by describing the possibility and the prerequisites for the development of a mentally healthy homosexuality.

"The assumption that choosing a same-sex partner is a symptom that homosexuality in itself makes an individual mentally ill is an assumption."

- Fritz Morgenthaler

Morgenthaler's thinking and writing is characterized by the fact that, given the scientific rigor, it is easy to understand even for laypeople. In recent years his most important works have been reprinted by the Gießener Psychosozial-Verlag .

Works (selection)

• The whites think too much. Psychoanalytic investigations among the Dogon in West Africa ; with Paul Parin and Goldy Parin-Matthèy. Atlantis, Zurich 1963; NA EVA, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 978-3-434-50602-7
• Fear your neighbor as yourself. Psychoanalysis and society based on the Agni model in West Africa ; with Paul Parin / Goldy Parin-Matthèy. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1971; NA Giessen 2006, ISBN 3-89806-462-X
• Technology. On the dialectic of psychoanalytic practice. Syndicate, Frankfurt / M. 1978; NA Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2005, ISBN 3-89806-414-X
• Homosexuality . In: Volkmar Sigusch (Ed.), Therapy of Sexual Disorders. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Stuttgart, New York: Thieme 1980, ISBN 3-13-517502-2
• Homosexuality, heterosexuality, perversion ; with a preface by Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs. Qumran, Frankfurt Paris 1984; NA Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89806-253-4
  • engl. Edition: Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, Perversion , trans. by Paul Moor , The Analytic Press, Hillsdale, New Jersey 1988, ISBN 978-0-88163-060-2
• Conversations by the dying river. Ethno-psychoanalysis among the Iatmul in Papua New Guinea ; with Florence Weiss and Marco Morgenthaler. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag (Geist und Psyche 42267), Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-42267-1
• The dream. Fragments on the theory and technique of dream interpretation , with drawings by the author. Edited by Paul Parin. Edition Qumran, Frankfurt New York 1986; NA Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2004, ISBN 3-89806-360-7
• Psychoanalysis, dream, ethnology. Mixed fonts. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2005, ISBN 3-89806-471-9

literature

• Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs: Understanding the foreign. Conversations about everyday life, normality and abnormality, with Georges Devereux, Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy, Fritz Morgenthaler, Erich Wulff, Stanley Diamond, Hans Bosse, David Cooper, Ronald D. Laing, Mario Erdheim. Qumran, Frankfurt Paris 1982, ISBN 3-88655-174-1
• Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs: Fritz Morgenthaler. Psychoanalyst, traveler, painter, juggler. Imago, Giessen 2005, ISBN 3-89806-429-8
• Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs: Expeditions abroad. Freud, Morgenthaler, Lévi-Strauss, Kerényi - the unconscious in modern thinking. Imago, Giessen 2005, ISBN 3-89806-435-2
• Johannes Reichmayr:  Morgenthaler, Fritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , pp. 118-120 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Morgenthaler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ralf Binswanger: Reading aid for Fritz Morgenthaler: Technology. (2005)
• "Faire travailler Morgenthaler" Congress of the Psychoanalytical Seminar Zurich on the 20th anniversary of Morgenthaler's death
• "Homosexuality" (1980)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Pritz, Stumm: Personal Lexicon of Psychotherapy . Vienna, New York 2005, 337ff
2. ^ Fritz Morgenthaler: The position of the perversions in metapsychology and technology . In: Psyche . tape 28 , 1974, p. 1077-1098 .
3. ↑ Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, Perversion , 1984
4. ^ Fritz Morgenthaler: Homosexuality, heterosexuality, perversion . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 978-3-596-42285-2 , pp. 86 . quoted from Udo Rauchfleisch: gays, lesbians, bisexuals. Lifestyles, prejudices, insights . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-525-40415-7 , pp.
    51 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
5. ↑ "According to Morgenthaler, sexual things, in whatever form, can never be pathological." Buchhandel.de ( Memento of the original from April 5, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.