Henri F. Ellenberger

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Henri F. Ellenberger

Henri Frédéric Ellenberger (born November 6, 1905 in Nalolo , Barotseland , Northern Rhodesia ; † May 1, 1993 in Québec , Canada ) was a Swiss psychiatrist , psychoanalyst , psychology and medical historian .

Life

Henri F. Ellenberger was born into a French-speaking Swiss family from Yverdon , whose relatives, including his grandfather David Frédéric Ellenberger , had been Protestant missionaries in southern Africa since the mid-19th century . After completing basic education in Northern Rhodesia, he attended secondary schools in France and in 1924 obtained a baccalaureate in the humanities at the University of Strasbourg . He studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg and received his doctorate in 1934 with a thesis on the emotional states in catatonic psychoses . He then opened a psychiatric practice in Poitiers . In the spring of 1941 he went to Switzerland with his wife and four children, where he worked for two years as a senior physician in the Waldau psychiatric clinic in Bern . From 1943 to 1952 he was a senior physician in the Breitenau psychiatric clinic in Schaffhausen . During these years he came into contact with pioneers in psychiatry and psychoanalysis such as Manfred Bleuler , Carl Gustav Jung , Ludwig Binswanger , Alphonse Maeder , Leopold Szondi and Oskar Pfister . With the latter, he completed an informal training analysis in the early 1950s .

In 1952 he accepted an offer from the Menninger Clinic in Topeka , USA, where he became professor of clinical psychiatry and assistant to Karl Menninger . The Menninger Clinic was at that time one of the most prestigious educational institutions for psychiatrists and was based on Freudian psychoanalysis.

From 1959 to 1962, Ellenberger worked at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal , Canada, a mental health facility affiliated with McGill University . His family, who had previously stayed in Switzerland, also followed him to Montreal. From 1962 until his retirement in 1977 he worked in the Department of Criminology at the University of Montreal , where he lectured on criminal psychology and biology , and as a clinical psychiatrist at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in Montreal. During the same time he carried out research into the history of psychiatry , the results of which he published in the book The Discovery of the Unconscious .

He is the brother of the geologist François Ellenberger .

Fonts (selection)

  • Essai sur le syndrome psychologique de la catatonie. 1933; Reprint: L'Harmattan, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7475-6031-7 .
  • The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. Basic Books, New York 1970, ISBN 0-465-01672-3 .
    • The discovery of the unconscious. History and development of dynamic psychiatry from its beginnings to Janet, Freud, Adler and Jung. From the American by Gudrun Theusner-Stampa. 2 volumes. Huber, Bern 1973 (and Zurich 1985); New edition: Diogenes, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-257-06503-5 .
  • with Robert Duguay: Précis pratique de psychiatrie. Maloine, Paris 1981, ISBN 2-224-00756-6 .
  • Médecines de l'âme, essais d'histoire de la folie et des guérisons psychiques. Edited by Elisabeth Roudinesco . Fayard, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-213-59500-3 .

literature

  • Mark S. Micale: The History of Psychiatry as the History of the Unconscious. In: Mark S. Micale, Roy Porter (Eds.): Discovering the History of Psychiatry. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1994, pp. 112-134 ( online ).
  • Ellenberger, Henri , in: Élisabeth Roudinesco ; Michel Plon: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: Names, Countries, Works, Terms . Translation from French. Vienna: Springer, 2004, ISBN 3-211-83748-5 , pp. 212-214

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christian Müller: Henri F. Ellenberger. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . October 29, 2009. Retrieved January 18, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Ellenberger, Henri F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ellenberger, Henri; Ellenberger, Henri Frédéric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and medical historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Nalolo , Barotseland , Northern Rhodesia
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1993
Place of death Quebec , Canada