Fritz Riemann (psychoanalyst)

Fritz Riemann (born September 15, 1902 in Chemnitz ; † August 24, 1979 in Munich ) was a German psychoanalyst , psychologist , psychotherapist and author .

Life

Fritz Riemann was born on September 15, 1902 in Chemnitz. He was the middle of three sons (Hans Riemann, the eldest, and Heinz, the youngest) and grew up in an upper-class family. His grandfather and father had founded a lamp factory in Chemnitz, in which car, motorcycle and bicycle lamps were made. The family lived on a generous basis: they owned a large house and staff, including a nanny. Even before the birth of the (surviving) boys, the mother lost two daughters to a miscarriage or a stillbirth. She was a loving mother to the boys as a child, but she found it difficult to cut the cord. According to Riemann's short biography, written by his wife Ruth, the mother dressed the youngest son for a long time.

The father, on the other hand, was a "patriarch with self-evident authority". He was more severe and irascible than loving. Since Fritz looked like his father outwardly, he was to become the successor in the family company.

In 1912 the father became seriously ill and died soon after. The mother suppressed this death by wanting to leave everything as it was when the father left her, whatever she said to the sons. The whole family urgently needed help coping. Here Ruth Riemann sees the impulse for Fritz Riemann's psychotherapeutic inclinations.

After graduating from high school , Fritz Riemann first did a commercial apprenticeship at Wanderer-Werke before he started working in his father's company. But it quickly turned out that his talents weren't in the commercial field. Against the resistance of his mother, he studied psychology in Munich from 1922. Eventually he left the university because the experimental psychology practiced at the time did not attract him.

In 1924 he married a doctor and moved with her to Pyrbaum , where she ran a country doctor's practice and he acquired the knowledge he was looking for in private studies. Some of his poems were published and he was engaged in a biography of Carl Spitteler . But even here he got no further. However, during his studies Riemann discovered psychoanalysis and astrology, the connection of which occupied him throughout his life.

In 1934 he went to Leipzig and became a student of the astrologer Herbert Freiherr von Klöckler and teaching analyst of the psychoanalyst Therese Benedek , after whose emigration in 1936 he took over some of her patients and tasks. His marriage ended in divorce.

In 1939, after six weeks of acquaintance, he married a second time. His second wife was the opposite of the first in type: she saw herself primarily as a wife and mother. As a result, three children were born together.

In 1943 Fritz Riemann was called up for military service and trained as a medic. He assisted an internist in Russia. In 1944 he got typhus , which he only survived thanks to a previous vaccination. He was reinstated in Holland and was taken prisoner of war by the English, from which he was released in 1945.

After the end of the war he met his family again, who had lost all material goods. A fourth child was born and Riemann tried to rebuild his practice in Munich. He found previous patients and, together with former colleagues, received a license to rebuild a psychotherapeutic training institute. Until a few years before his death, he was on the board of the current Academy for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy .

In 1950 the second marriage was divorced, and Riemann married a third time, a psychologist. The two older children went to their father, only the smaller ones stayed with their mother. In 1951 another son was born, Riemann's fifth child.

In 1961 the first edition of his major work, Basic Forms of Fear, appeared .

In 1979, Riemann was diagnosed with cancer, which led to his death on August 24, 1979.

Career

Fritz Riemann made three training analyzes . His first training analyst was Therese Benedek, who had to leave the German Psychoanalytic Society in 1935 because of her Jewish father and who emigrated to the USA in 1936. Riemann did his second training analysis with Felix Boehm and the third with Harald Schultz-Hencke .

Fritz Riemann co-founded the Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy in Munich in 1946, which was renamed the “Academy for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy” in 1974. At first he was the only training analyst at the institute and for many years the only Freudian . From 1956 to 1967 he was training manager there.

Riemann was an honorary member of the Academy of Psychoanalysis in New York .

Works

Basic forms of fear

→ Main article : Basic forms of fear

In 1961 Riemann published the depth psychological study Basic Forms of Fear . In it he postulates four types of personality , which - in his words - are “ultimately four different ways of being in the world” (ibid., Current edition: Introduction, p. 18), connected with the corresponding "basic forms" of fear , should act. He calls them schizoid , depressed , compulsive, or hysterical personalities.

He emphasizes that a person not only has one of these character traits, but is individual and adaptable and z. B. can strengthen an area that was previously weak.

Astrology help in life

Riemann also turned to astrology and in 1976 published the book Lebenshilfe Astrologie - Thoughts and Experiences , which he saw as a contribution to their “rehabilitation”; In it, he advocates an unprejudiced approach to the way of thinking and symbolic language of astrology. He saw the inclusion of the individual natal chart as fruitful for all human relationships, whereby he emphasized personal responsibility in personal development. According to him, astrology also had an influence on his psychotherapeutic work.

Publications

psychology

• Basic forms of fear and the antinomies of life. Ernst Reinhardt, Basel / Munich 1961; 38. A. 2007, ISBN 3-497-00749-8
• Basic forms of helping partnership. Selected essays (ed. And included by Karl Herbert Mandel). Pfeiffer, Munich 1974; 9. A. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-89622-8
• The art of aging. Mature and let go . Kreuz, Stuttgart 1981; 4. A. (revised by Wolfgang Kleespies) Reinhardt, Basel / Munich 2007, ISBN 3-497-01955-0
• The ability to love . Kreuz, Stuttgart 1982; 8. A. Reinhardt, Basel / Munich 2008, ISBN 3-497-01901-1
• The Schizoide Society , Kaiser, Munich 1975; 2nd A. Chr. Kaiser, Mchn. 9/1986, ISBN 3-459-01010-X

astrology

• Astrology help in life. Thoughts and experiences . Pfeiffer, Munich 1976; dtv, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-423-34262-5
• The happy horoscope. Astrological verses (with Ernst von Xylander). Origo, Zurich 1955; 4th rev. A. 1993, ISBN 3-282-00022-7

Web links

Wikiquote: Fritz Riemann (Psychoanalyst)  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Fritz Riemann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Rudolf Sponsel on Riemann's typology

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz Riemann, a short biography . In: Fritz Riemann: Basic forms of fear . 31. A. 1999, p. 9
2. ↑ Johannes Grunert: On the history of psychoanalysis in Munich. In: Psyche. 38, 1984.