Helmut Thomä

Helmut Thomä (born May 6, 1921 in Stuttgart ; † August 3, 2013 in Leipzig ) was a German doctor , psychoanalyst and university professor . With his habilitation in 1961 at the University of Heidelberg, he was the first German to receive the Venia legendi for psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalysis. Together with Horst Kächele , he wrote an important textbook on psychoanalysis.

Life

Helmut Thomä came to psychoanalysis through Felix Schottländer . In 1950 he became an employee of Alexander Mitscherlich at the Psychosomatic University Clinic in Heidelberg. In 1955 he went to Yale University in New Haven (Connecticut) for a year on a Fulbright scholarship . In 1962 Thomä was the first doctor to be qualified to teach psychosomatic medicine and psychoanalysis at a German university. His habilitation thesis on anorexia nervosa impressed with the careful presentation of case histories in the context of clinical theory. Thomä received important suggestions from Michael Balint , whom he met while on a scholarship in London. He then began a study of the analyst's interpretations. His own research on a larger scale became possible when Thure von Uexküll brought him to Ulm in 1967, where he took over the chair for psychotherapy at the Medical and Natural Science University of Ulm . From 1968 to 1972 Helmut Thomä was chairman of the German Psychoanalytic Association .

In a long-term collaboration with Horst Kächele, his later successor at the Ulm chair, Thomä examined psychotherapeutic processes on various levels. His special interest was in the consensus problem among clinicians, as well as a solid scientific-theoretical foundation of psychoanalysis. After his retirement he moved to Leipzig with his wife.

Thomä and Kächele gained international renown with numerous publications. Her textbook on psychoanalytic therapy has been translated into ten languages. On the other hand, the Ulm School of Psychoanalysis also provoked resistance from some colleagues. In the paradigm of the empirical foundation of psychoanalysis, in intersubjectivism and its scientification of education, some saw a departure from the classical heritage.

Positions

“Helmut Thomä - now [2002] over eighty - was always a rebel, sensitive, headstrong, edgy. On his early travels to the Anglo-American world, those convictions crystallized in him that earned the initially rather orthodox psychoanalyst the reputation of an innovator and connected him to his 'brother in spirit' Kächele. The two countered speculative metapsychology with the postulate of a scientific investigation of the psychoanalytic process. Their principle: the hypotheses of psychoanalysis have to prove themselves empirically. Thomä was one of the first to use tape recordings to check the therapist's interpretive work and its effects on the patient. "

Honors

• 2002 International Sigmund Freud Prize for Psychotherapy , Vienna
• 2005 Mary Sigourney Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association
• 2006 Doctor honoris causa from the University of Leipzig

Fonts

• About two cases of Siderosis Bulbi. 1944 (dissertation, University of Tübingen, 1945).
• Anorexia Nervosa: History, Clinic, and Theories of Adolescent Anorexia. Huber, Bern 1961.
• Writings on the practice of psychoanalysis: From reflective to active psychoanalyst. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981.
• With Horst Kächele : textbook on psychoanalytic therapy. 2 volumes. Springer, Berlin 1985/88; 2nd, revised edition 1996; 3rd, revised and updated edition: Psychoanalytic Therapy. 3 volumes. Springer, Heidelberg 2006.
• Edited with Martin Altmeyer : The networked soul: The intersubjective turn in psychoanalysis. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2006; 2nd edition 2010.

Web links

• Literature by and about Helmut Thomä in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice Leipziger Volkszeitung , August 10, 2013
2. ↑ http://www.balint-stiftung.de/dl/Sigmund_Freud_Preis.pdf  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ http://www.uni-protocol.de/nachrichten/id/5951/