Hilde Bruch

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Hilde Bruch (born March 11, 1904 in Dülken , Niederrhein ; † December 15, 1984 in Houston , Texas ) was a German-American doctor , psychoanalyst and specialist in eating disorders .

Life

Hilde Bruch grew up as the third child with four brothers and two sisters. Her parents, Hirsch Bruch (* 1865 in Brüggen, † 1920 in Dülken) and Adele nee Rath (* 1876 Kempen , † 1943 in New York) owned a cattle trading business in Dülken, Süchtelnerstraße .

In 1923, Hilde Bruch passed her A-levels at the “State College of Girls” in Mönchengladbach . She wanted to become a mathematician. However, her uncle David Rath, a doctor in Düsseldorf, convinced her that medicine offered better career opportunities for a Jewish woman. She studied at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg im Breisgau , where she graduated with a doctorate in medicine in 1928. In 1929 she was approved. She did her practical year in Düsseldorf at the gynecological clinic of the municipal hospitals. There she was strongly hostile as a Jew and only stayed six months. She then worked as an assistant doctor in Kiel and then in Leipzig.
On October 15, 1932, she opened a pediatrician practice in Ratingen .

In April 1933 she closed her practice under pressure from the National Socialists. In July 1933 she used the Pediatric Congress in London to explore job opportunities in Great Britain. She worked for several months at a Jewish hospital for maternity leave and felt underchallenged there. At the end of September 1934 she emigrated to the USA. In New York she researched from 1935 in the field of psychiatry and from 1936 on obesity in children . From 1941 she completed an in-depth psychiatric training at the Johns Hopkins University ( Baltimore ) with Adolf Meyer , the most famous American psychiatrist at the time, and with Frieda Fromm-Reichmann , Erich Fromm's wife . There she also met Harry Stack Sullivan , Edith Weigert , Theodore Lidz and Ruth Lidz. Sullivan, Lawrence S. Kubie, and Fromm-Reichmann were her main teachers. The latter invited her to her weekly psychoanalytic seminars at Chestnut Lodge . She returned to New York in 1943, opened a private psychoanalytic practice and taught at Columbia University . In 1952 she published her book Don't Be Afraid of Your Child: A Guide for Perplexed Parents.
In 1964 she received a professorship in psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

In addition to a flourishing private practice and professorship at Columbia University, she was active in research and authored countless specialist articles that earned her a reputation as an authority on schizophrenia and eating disorders.

When the book The Importance of Overweight was published in 1957, Hilde Bruch was already considered a leading researcher on childhood obesity. Her work was one of the first to educate the public about their dangers.

When anorexia nervosa increased rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s , she became increasingly concerned with the treatment of this disease and soon became one of the world's leading experts in the field.

Hilde Bruch was also considered a brilliant and creative psychotherapist. In her book Grundzüge der Psychotherapie she provided a precise and well-founded description of the intensive interpersonal psychotherapeutic process as it was first practiced by Alfred Adler and then further developed in practice by her teachers Sullivan and Fromm-Reichmann and herself.

“ Learning psychotherapy is a lifelong process; it is a never-to-be-done task of constant creative reorientation, a study of failures as well as successes based on unswerving objectivity and willingness to learn. The therapist cannot increase his professional knowledge by repeating what he has done or learned so far. He must treat every new patient for who he is, as a stranger whose needs and problems are unique and unprecedented; the challenge posed by the patient is to approach him in a special way, in a way that is tailored to his particular situation. It is precisely this keen sense of the novelty of every therapeutic encounter that enables the fully trained therapist to use previous experiences as well as current ignorance in a constructive way. (Hilde Bruch, Principles of Psychotherapy) "

Awards

  • 1978 Honorary Doctorate from Baylor University in Waco , Texas
  • 1978 William A. Schonfeld Award from the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry
  • 1979 Mount Airy Foundation Gold Medal for Excellence in Psychiatry
  • 1980 Nolan DC Lewis Award from the American Psychiatric Association
  • 1981 Joseph B. Goldberger Award from the American Medical Association for first female psychiatrist
  • Since 1984 Baylor University in Waco has presented the Hilde Bruch Award annually for outstanding achievements in psychiatry.

Works (selection)

  • Basics of psychotherapy . Fischer S. Verlag GmbH, 1977, ISBN 3-10-008402-0 .
  • The golden cage. The riddle of anorexia . 18th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1998, ISBN 3-596-26744-7 .
  • Eating disorders . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 2000, ISBN 3-596-26796-X .
  • The starved self. Conversations with anorexic people . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-596-10167-0 .

literature

  • Hilde Bruch: Personal Reminiscences of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann . In: Psychiatry . 45: 98-104 (1982)
  • Joanne Hatch Bruch: Unlocking the Golden Cage: An Intimate Biography of Hilde Bruch , Gurze Books, Carlsbad (California) , April 1996, ISBN 0-936077-16-6
  • Reinhard Heitkamp: Hilde Bruch (1904–1984), life and work. Medical dissertation, Cologne 1987
  • Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lexicon to life and work, Reinbek 1993 ISBN 3-499-16344-6
  • Hermann Tapken: From Ratingen Pediatrician to Prominent American Scientist - Hilde Bruch, a Jewish Fate , in: Ratinger Forum 8. Contributions to City and Regional History , Ratingen 2003, pp. 170–215

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry Hirsch Bruch in the Euregio family book . Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  2. ↑ charite.de
  3. ↑ Erika Münster-Schröer: The Path of a Jewish Pediatrician in the USA: Dr. Hilde Bruch - therapist for anorexia and bulimia
  4. ↑ a b Erika Münster-Schröer: The path of a Jewish pediatrician to the USA: Dr. Hilde Bruch - therapist for anorexia and bulimia
  5. ↑ www.adolescent-psychiatry.org
personal data
SURNAME Bruch, Hilde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American doctor and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Dülken , Lower Rhine
DATE OF DEATH 15th December 1984
Place of death Houston , Texas