Gaetano Benedetti

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1996 at a lecture at the University of Münster

Gaetano Benedetti (born July 7, 1920 in Catania ; † December 2, 2013 in Basel ) was an Italian psychiatrist , psychoanalyst and psychotherapist . He is considered a pioneer of psychoanalytic psychosis therapy.

Life

Benedetti grew up sheltered as the eldest son of a surgeon in an aristocratic family in Sicily . He himself described the security of his childhood as an important, essential prerequisite for working with severely disturbed patients. He studied medicine at the University of Catania and graduated with the state examination. He continued his education in psychiatry , initially in Catania, where the subject was more neurological. From 1947 he studied psychopathology at the University of Zurich and worked as an assistant doctor at the Burghölzli Clinic . There he came across a psychiatry where, through the work of Carl Gustav Jung , Eugen Bleuler and his son Manfred Bleuler , a psychoanalytic tradition in the understanding of serious mental illnesses had developed for the first time . In 1953 he received his habilitation and professor at the University of Zurich. In 1955 he received a call to Rome, which he did not follow in order not to compete with a colleague who was friends. In 1956 he was appointed associate professor for mental hygiene and psychotherapy at the University of Basel . There he established and taught until his retirement in 1985 a psychoanalytically based theory and therapy of psychoses , especially schizophrenic diseases.

He was unable to meet the call to the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1960 for health reasons. As a result of an acoustic neuroma , he had lost sight of the right eye and the ability to hear in his right ear. Later he was able to overcome the physical limitations to the extent that he was able to restore his ability to work.

In addition to his teaching activities, on the one hand he was always clinically active, on the other hand he ensured the establishment and dissemination of a psychotherapeutic view of the psychoses internationally. In 1956, together with Christian Müller , he organized the First International Symposium on Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia in Lausanne , from which the International Society of Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) emerged. This was followed by symposia in Zurich, Turku , Oslo , Heidelberg , Yale and Stockholm . A decisive symposium took place in Turin in 1988 with 1,300 participants. A year later it led to the establishment of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Society in Rio de Janeiro . In 2013, the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Brian Martindale continued this work with a symposium in Warsaw . Another symposium took place after Benedetti's death in 2015 in New York City .

In 1971 Benedetti and Johannes Cremerius founded a psychoanalytical training institute for psychosis therapy in Milan, where many Italian doctors and psychologists were trained. He was also involved in training German psychoanalysts as a training analyst for the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG).

Benedetti was married and had four children.

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Benedetti devoted himself to researching the psychopathology of psychoses, especially schizophrenia, and the possibilities of their psychotherapeutic treatment for over 60 years. He presented the results of this work in over 500 publications and over 20 books, some of which have been translated into different languages.

In his work he emphasizes that in addition to the agonizing and destructive character of the schizophrenic symptoms, they also have a creative potential, which is particularly evident in the creative designs of patients and can be experienced in the psychotherapeutic relationship. The therapeutic relationship design must give an equally creative response so that a healing process can develop between patient and therapist. Specifically, Benedetti was able to show that the sick person is trapped in a primary symbiotic condition that is experienced as life-threatening. Due to the predominant defense mechanism of projection , the patient remains too closely connected to the intentions and feelings of his fellow human beings. As a result, z. B. Fantasies to be responsible for the atrocities of the world. The person concerned tries to counter this suffering with division and an autistic withdrawal as a solution. He withdraws - even if unnoticed at first - more and more into a fantasy world, the construction of which is not in exchange with the environment, but is built up in extreme separation. In this way, a complex inner world is constructed, which appears as a delusional system when the disease breaks out . The psychic level of symbolization is not reached, that is, the ability to distinguish between the things themselves and the names of things is lacking.

Based on this understanding, according to Benedetti, psychotherapy of schizophrenia is possible, but represents an existential challenge for the therapist that goes far beyond what psychotherapy in the field of neurotic diseases is required of the therapist. In addition to the importance of listening, appropriate questions and adequate answers, he emphasizes the need for adaptation between patient and therapist as a mutual task. A balance of closeness and distance, wish fulfillment and denial, consolation and rigor, authority and freedom as well as a specific way of dealing with interpretations is required, each time newly adapted to the patient's development . By precisely describing the transferences and countertransference appearing in therapy, he refuted the earlier view that schizophrenic patients were incapable of transference. In doing so, he emphasized the special importance of the necessity of going through and working through phases of negative transference.

He understands the psychotherapy of the schizophrenic as a work in which the therapist has to absorb the negative self-image of the patient in the sense of Bion and give it back to him in a detoxified form. It requires the development of an intermediate space, a new, more bearable relationship between closeness and distance and a defusing of the projections in order to improve the patient's quality of life with the help of the patient's creative powers.

Following on from Winnicott's squiggle game , together with his student and close colleague, the doctor and art therapist Maurizio Peciccia, he developed the technique of imaginative drawing as a special method in which the patient and therapist begin visual communication in which the mirror imitation plays a special role through the therapist.

Awards and honors

  • 1981 Jacob Burckhardt Prize from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation in Basel.
  • 1985 Hans Prinzhorn Medal of the German-speaking Society for Art & Psychopathology of Expression
  • Honorary member of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG)
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry
  • 1992 nomination for the Nobel Prize by the University of Basel
  • 1999 Margrit Egnér Prize
  • 2011 Name of the psychoanalytic training institute in Perugia after Gaetano Benedetti
  • In 2016, the German Psychoanalytical Society awarded the Gaetano Benedetti Memorial Prize, which is planned annually, for the first time

Fonts (selection)

  • The Mentally Sufferer and His World: A Medically Psychological Lecture. Hippokrates, Stuttgart 1964 (= series of publications on the theory and practice of psychotherapy , volume 4); as paperback: Kindler, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-463-18139-8 (= Kindler paperback , volume 2139, Geist und Psyche ).
  • Psyche and Biology , Hippokrates, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-7773-0335-6 .
  • with Udo Rauchfleisch , Raymond Battegay and others: Schizophrenia in our society: Research on schizophrenia 1966 - 1972 . Thieme, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-13-531801-X .
  • Selected essays on schizophrenia. Publishing house for medical psychology in the publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1975, ISBN 3-525-45636-0 .
  • The insane as a fellow human being. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1976, ISBN 3-525-33406-0 .
  • Death landscapes of the soul. Publishing house for medical psychology in the publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1983, ISBN 3-525-45666-2 .
  • Psychotherapy as an existential challenge. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-525-45742-1 .
  • Clinical psychotherapy. Introduction to the psychotherapy of psychoses. Huber-Verlag, Bern 1996, ISBN 978-3-456-80789-8
  • with Rut Bischler and Gottfried Waser: Trauma and Art. Sexual Abuse and Depression - Trauma and Art. Sexual Abuse and Depression. S. Karger, Basel 2004, ISBN 3-8055-7556-4 .
  • Symbol, dream, psychosis. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-49086-0 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary: Gaetano Benedetti by Michael Ermann . German Psychoanalytic Society of December 18, 2013
  2. ↑ a b c Joachim Küchenhoff: Gaetano Benedetti, the pioneer of psychoanalytic psychosis psychotherapy, has died. Swiss Archives of Neurology and Psychiatrie 2013; 164 (8): 260-61
  3. ^ A b c Carola Hesse-Marx and Maurizio Peciccia: The mentally ill as fellow man. Obituary for the death of Gaetano Benedetti. In: Günter Lempa and Elisabeth Troje (eds.): Between Biology and Biography. Influences on therapeutic practice. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, pp. 178-184, ISBN 978-3-525-45237-0
  4. ↑ a b News report on the death of Gaetano Benedetti from December 5, 2016 from the umbrella organization for German-speaking psychoses psychotherapy
  5. ↑ Website of the Italian Society Gaetano Benedetti (Italian)
  6. ↑ Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Milan (Italian)
  7. ^ Daniel Hell: In memoriam Gaetano Benedetti . In: Schweizerische Ärztezeitung 2014; 95: 3. Available online
  8. ↑ a b Bernhard Hofacker, Gerhard Ebner: My psychotherapy of the psychoses in the psychotherapy of the present. Summary of the lecture by Prof. Dr. med Gaetano Benedetti on January 16, 1999 in the Schaffhausen Psychiatry Center. In: Swiss Archive for Neurology and Psychiatry 3/2000 P. 128 f Online
  9. ↑ Gaetano Benedetti: Clinical Psychotherapy. Introduction to the psychotherapy of psychoses. 2nd revised edition. Huber-Verlag, Bern 1980 ISBN 3-456-80789-9
  10. ↑ Gerhard Dammann, Thomas Meng (ed.): Mirror processes in psychotherapy and art therapy. The Progressive Therapeutic Mirror Image - a method in dialogue. With a foreword by Gaetano Benedetti. 2nd edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-52540-165-1
  11. ↑ Hans Prinzhorn Medal, laureate
  12. ^ Margrit Egnér Prize
  13. ^ Istituto Gaetano Benedetti Perugia (Italian). Retrieved April 11, 2018
  14. ↑ Gaetano Benedetti Memorial Prize
personal data
SURNAME Benedetti, Gaetano
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Catania
DATE OF DEATH 2nd December 2013
Place of death Basel