Heinrich Meng

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Heinrich Otto Meng (born July 9, 1887 in Hohnhurst , † August 10, 1972 in Basel ) was a German - Swiss psychoanalyst and founder of the European psycho-hygiene movement .

Life

Heinrich Meng was the son of the teacher Wilhelm Meng and Brigitte Hengstler. Even in his youth Meng had a wide range of interests; he was involved in the youth movement , in the abstinence movement , with the pacifists and the socialists . Meng graduated from secondary school and began an apprenticeship as a violin maker with his uncle , which he broke off, then he attended school again until he graduated from high school in 1906. After studying medicine in Freiburg, Leipzig and Würzburg , he received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1912. During the First World War he was drafted as a military doctor from 1915 to 1918, where Karl Landauer made him aware of psychoanalysis. From 1918 until his death, Meng was in correspondence with Sigmund Freud .

Meng did a training analysis with Paul Federn in Vienna in 1921 and with Hanns Sachs in Berlin in 1922 and worked at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute from 1923 . In the same year he was asked by the Soviet leadership in Moscow to consult on Lenin's illness , and he also stayed with the behaviorist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov . In 1922 he founded the “Southwest German Psychoanalytical Working Group” with Erich Fromm and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann . From 1925 he worked at the homeopathically oriented Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart , where from 1926 he became chief physician of the “internal women's department”. In Stuttgart he was the founder of the Hippokrates publishing house , with the share capital being donated by Robert Bosch , and, together with Ernst Schneider, editor of the “Journal for Psychoanalytical Pedagogy”. Together with Paul Federn and others he edited the Psychoanalytische Volksbuch . In 1926 he was elected a member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association. In 1929 he married Mathilde Koehler for the second time and had a daughter Brigitte Meng with her . He had two sons from his first marriage to Paula Schuhmacher.

From 1929 he became head of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute in Frankfurt with Karl Landauer . There he worked with Louis Grote on anorexia , which at the time was still subsumed under Simmonds' disease .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , the institute in Frankfurt was closed for political reasons and the Meng family emigrated to Switzerland , where he did not get a job for psychohygiene at the University of Basel until 1937 , albeit as a psychologist, since as a refugee he did not have a work permit as a doctor received. After the war, he was appointed associate professor in Basel in 1945 at the first European chair for mental hygiene that had been set up especially for him. From 1935 to 1950 he was the editor of the book series “Psychohygiene. Science and Practice ” published by Benno Schwabe . Meng became a member of various international institutes and societies, such as the International Psychoanalytical Association and the Weizmann Institute . In 1951 he was naturalized in Basel.

Meng worked with Georg Groddeck and Viktor von Weizsäcker on the basics of psychosomatics . His field was the prevention of mental illnesses by means of mental hygiene as well as the psychology of organic illnesses, for which he had proposed the term "organ psychosis" in 1928.

Meng's autobiography was published in 1971 while he was still alive. The "Institute for Mental Hygiene" established with his support from the Erftkreis in Brühl was renamed in 1973 to "Heinrich Meng Institute".

selected Writings

  • The Psychoanalytic Folk Book , 1926
  • Punishments and Education , 1934
  • Mental health protection; an introduction to diagnostics, research and practical application of mental hygiene , 1939
  • Practice of mental hygiene; Experience and Experiment , 1943
  • Psyche and hormone, basic questions of psychotherapy; the teaching of S. Freud, the experimental research of E. Steinach, the organ psychosis, conclusions for therapy and prophylaxis , 1944
  • Coercion and freedom in education; Educate, punish, tire out , 1945
  • The prophylaxis of crime , 1948
  • Practice of child and youth psychology: education, teaching, neurosis prophylaxis , 1951
  • Psychology in Dental Practice , 1952
  • Sigmund Freud and Sociology. In: Theodor W. Adorno , Walter Dirks (Ed.): Sociologica. Essays dedicated to Max Horkheimer's sixtieth birthday . Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1955, pp. 67–76.
  • Psychohygienic lectures; an introduction to the theory and practice of mental health protection , 1958
  • Life as an encounter , 1971
  • Psychoanalysis. Schoolchildren's psychoanalytic pedagogy , 1973
  • Psychoanalytic Pedagogy of Toddlers , 1973

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mathilde Fahrenkamp, ​​b. Köhler, art historian: Mathilde Meng-Koehler: The pictures of Konrad Witz and their sources: Legenda aurea, Speculum humanae salvationis, Bible , Basel: Holbein-Verl., 1947 DNB
  2. ^ Writer Brigitte Meng (* 1932) at DNB
  3. ↑ Grote, LR and Meng, H .: About internal and psychotherapeutic treatment of endogenous anorexia. Swiss medical weekly. 1934, 67 (7), pp. 137-141
  4. ↑ Gerd Biermann was co-founder of the Institute for Mental Hygiene and its first director (1970–1978) . Website: Heinrich Meng Institute gGmbh Social Pediatric Center Rhein-Erft-Kreis
personal data
SURNAME Meng, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meng, Heinrich Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Swiss psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Hohnhurst
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 1972
Place of death Basel