Hans-Dieter Schmidt (psychologist)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans-Dieter Schmidt (born March 29, 1927 in Schwachenwalde , Krs. Arnswalde / Neumark, † June 4, 2007 in Berlin ) was a German psychologist. He was a professor of developmental psychology at the Humboldt University in Berlin . His teaching and research focus was primarily on developmental psychology, personality psychology and forensic psychology (e.g. the decision-based justification of intent in GDR criminal law). With his textbook “Allgemeine Entwicklungspsychologie” published in 1970, he also gained international fame.

Life

His father was a teacher. At Easter 1933 Hans-Dieter started school at Perleberg elementary school and in 1937 went to high school for boys. Then military service and imprisonment. In the summer of 1946 he passed his school leaving examination in Perleberg. From the autumn of 1946 to 1949 he worked as a new teacher and from 1948 after the first teacher examination as a school trainee in Kleinow, Prignitz. In autumn 1949 he enrolled at the pedagogical faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin (HUB). After four semesters, he switched to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences to study psychology . He passed the main diploma examination in the summer of 1953 at the Institute of Psychology with Kurt Gottschaldt , and afterwards he was one of his closest students.

Schmidt did his doctorate in 1956 at the HUB ( The behavior of domestic dogs in conflict situations ), and also obtained his habilitation in 1966 at the HUB ( Experimental studies on behavior in unsafe and risky situations ).

From 1957 to 1959 he worked as Gottschaldt's research assistant in the laboratory for experimental and applied psychology at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW), and from 1959 to 1960 as an employee at the Institute for Educational Psychology at the HUB. 1960 to 1963 he moved to Jena as a lecturer at the newly founded Institute for Psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena .

From 1963 he was back in Berlin as an employee at the Institute for Psychology under the direction of Friedhart Klix (from 1968 Section Psychology) of the HUB. In 1968 he received a professorship with a teaching position in psychology, which was converted to a full professorship in 1969 (initially clinical psychology, from 1975 developmental psychology). 1970 to 1973 he was director of the psychology section of the HUB. In 1992 Schmidt retired , but continued to work as a visiting professor at Humboldt University.

As a psychological expert on the prosecution, Schmidt was at the side of Friedrich Karl Kaul in some concentration camp trials (Essen trial against guards at Dora concentration camp and the 2nd Sachsenhausen trial in Cologne).

In 1982 he published a highly acclaimed essay The Image of the Child - Its Norm and Its Effects , which led to bitter hostility from official GDR pedagogy.

In the early 1980s, Schmidt founded the research project “Biopsychosocial Human Unity” together with Günter Tembrock , Karl-Friedrich Wessel and Günter Dörner . Together they developed a theoretical model and a critical approach for interdisciplinary research in the human sciences , thereby establishing a new discipline, human ontogenetics .

Between 1985 and 1990 he supervised numerous projects within the interdisciplinary and internationally oriented "Central Working Group on Peace Research of the Humboldt University".

After the fall of the Wall, he was also involved in the commission to investigate the police attacks on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the GDR. From 1990 and after his retirement he was involved in the council and senate of the Humboldt University as well as vice-rector in the rebuilding of the university.

Schmidt was a member of the Society for Psychology of the GDR , 1962–1977 on the board. From 1968 to 1977 he held various functions (member of the faculty council, member of the scientific advisory board for psychology in the GDR University Ministry). From 1990 to 1995 he was a member of the German Society for Psychology and from 1990 to 1992 a member of the board there.

In addition, he also wrote popular scientific works on child development that received much attention.

Schmidt felt connected to the Marxist worldview, a Marxist image of man, but without being a member of the SED - he was also critical of real socialism. This was shown e.g. B. in a protest letter on the occasion of Wolf Biermann's expatriation and a moralistic attitude that many of his employees and students particularly valued.

But he knew how not to get sidelined as a dissident in order to remain effective, also through compromises. He was helped not least by his good acquaintance with Friedhart Klix and his formative effect on the climate at the institute and the later section for psychology, which was able to largely prevent existential restrictive steps. Schmidt himself presented this contradiction in great detail in his book "Texts between Yes and No: Self-Inquiry." From 1970 he took over the direct successor of Friedhart Klix in the function of director of the psychology section of the HUB.

Fonts (selection)

Reference books

  • Schmidt, Hans-Dieter (1970): General developmental psychology. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin (reprint 1972).
  • Schmidt, Hans-Dieter; Szewczyk, Hans (1973): Personality Diagnostics. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin.
  • Rösler, Hans-Dieter; Schmidt, Hans-Dieter; Szewczyk, Hans (1974): Personality Diagnostics: Problems and Results of Personality Diagnostic Research in Clinical Psychology in the GDR. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin
  • Schmidt, Hans-Dieter (1982): Outline of personality psychology. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin.

Other works

  • Hans-Dieter Schmidt, Evelyn Richter (1980): Human development miracle. Urania Verlag, Berlin (up to 3rd edition 1986)
  • Hans-Dieter Schmidt, Ernst Ludwig Grauel (Hrsg.) (1985): Step by step: The development of the child up to the 7th year of life. People and health, Berlin and Fischer, Stuttgart, (up to 4th edition 1989 in both publishers).
  • Hans-Dieter Schmidt (1997): Texts between yes and no: self-questioning by a GDR psychologist. Berlin studies on the philosophy of science & human ontogenetics Volume 12. Small.
  • Hans-Dieter Schmidt (2005): Back then in Braunland. Autobiographical Episodes. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-936872-67-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Handbook Who Was Who in the GDR .
  2. ↑ Tabular curriculum vitae p. 137 in: Texts between yes and no: self-survey (see literature)
  3. ↑ The image of the child - its norm and its effects as a reprint (PDF; 119 kB)
  4. ↑ See texts between Yes and No , p. 66, see general article in Wissenschaft & Frieden 1987
  5. ^ Author portrait of Hans-Dieter Schmidt in Lukasverlag
  6. ↑ cf. also his textbook on personality psychology
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Hans-Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwachenwalde / Neumark , Arnswalde district
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 2007
Place of death Berlin