Hanscarl Leuner

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Hanscarl Leuner

Hanscarl Leuner (born January 8, 1919 in Bautzen , † June 22, 1996 in Göttingen ) was a German psychiatrist and psychotherapist .

He is the founder of Katathym-Imaginative Psychotherapy and is also considered a pioneer in the scientific research and psychotherapeutic use of psychoactive substances (so-called psycholytic psychotherapy ).

Life

Soon after graduating from high school , Leuner expressed interest in the profession of psychotherapist and initially studied medicine in Frankfurt / Main, Würzburg and Marburg from 1939 to 1946 - interrupted by military service . After completing his studies, he did a training analysis with the young student Gustav Schmaltz in Frankfurt and from 1947 worked in the psychiatric clinic in Marburg .

At the request of Professor Klaus Conrad , he moved in 1959 from Marburg to Göttingen and habilitated there with a completed already in Marburg record of model psychosis . In the same year he began to set up his own department “ Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy ” within the Göttingen Psychiatric Clinic . In 1975 it became an independent "Department for Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy", which Leuner headed until his retirement in 1985.

Active until the last year of life, Hanscarl Leuner suffered a heart attack in February 1996 and died a few months later after a brief period of improvement.

Services

As early as the late 1940s in Marburg, Leuner began - stimulated by reading primarily Ernst Kretschmer's works - to test and investigate the therapeutic effect of imagination on his patients. In 1954 he described this procedure in his first publications under the term “Katathymes Bilderleben”, known today and widely as Katathym-Imaginative Psychotherapy .

Around the mid-1950s, he also began using various hallucinogens to support imaginative psychotherapy. The controlled medical use of psychoactive and psychedelic substances to deepen psychotherapeutic processes became known as psycholytic psychotherapy .

In 1960 Leuner initiated the “First European Symposium on Psychotherapy under LSD 25 ” at Göttingen University. In 1964 he founded the "European Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy" (EPT). Against the background of increasing public and political condemnation of non-medically controlled drug use and abuse, however, more and more doctors withdrew from this research at the end of the 1960s, and the EPT was dissolved after its fifth symposium in 1971.

In 1974, on Leuner's initiative, the “Working Group for Katathymes Picture Life and Imaginative Procedures in Psychotherapy” ( AGKB ) was brought into being.

In 1985, Leuner and other researchers founded the “European College for Consciousness Studies” (ECBS) and took over the presidency. Since its inception, the ECBS has held several symposia on specific topics and organized three congresses under the title “Worlds of Consciousness ”. The second congress in Heidelberg in 1996 was initiated by Leuner himself.

Fonts

Leuner published a variety of medical articles and textbooks. The following publications are only a small selection:

  • The experimental psychosis. Your psychopharmacology, phenomenology and dynamics in relation to the person. Springer, Berlin 1962 1962, ISBN 978-3-540-02883-3 . Reprint 1997: Berlin VWB.
  • Katathymes picture life: lower level. Introduction to psychotherapy using the daydream technique. A seminar. Thieme, Stuttgart 1970; 5th edition: Katathym-Imaginative Psychotherapy (KIP): "Katathymes Bilderleben". Introduction to psychotherapy using the daydream technique. A seminar. Thieme, Stuttgart 1994.
  • Hallucinogens: Psychological Limits in Research and Psychotherapy. Huber, Bern 1981, ISBN 3-456-80933-6 .
  • Textbook of the Katathymes Pictorial Life. Huber, Bern 1985; 3rd edition: Textbook of Katathym-Imaginative Psychotherapy. Huber, Bern 1994, ISBN 3-456-82430-0 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Leuner, Hanscarl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and psychotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Bautzen
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1996
Place of death Goettingen