Julius Spier

Julius Spier (born April 25, 1887 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 15, 1942 in Amsterdam ) was a German psychoanalyst and the founder of psycho- chirology .

Life

Julius Spier was the son of Jewish parents. At the age of 14, he began an apprenticeship at the Beer-Sontheimer trading company, where he worked his way up to leading positions. After his 25th anniversary in the company, he gave up his job and devoted himself to his private interests, especially the art of palmistry , psychotherapy and music.

He did a two-year training analysis with Carl Gustav Jung in Zurich. Jung encouraged him to include palmistry in his therapeutic work. Spier did this after moving to Berlin in 1929. He started a practice that became very successful and gave courses in palmistry.

In 1939 Spier emigrated to Holland . In Amsterdam he successfully resumed therapeutic and teaching activities and gathered a circle of students around him. He died of lung cancer in 1942, shortly before the Gestapo wanted to deport him to the Westerbork transit camp (and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp ).

He was married to Hedwig Rocco since 1917. He and her had two children, Ruth, born in 1918, and Wolfgang Spier (1920-2011, who later became an actor). The marriage ended in divorce in 1935. Spier later became engaged to one of his students, Hertha Levi, who emigrated to England.

Spier became known decades after his death through the publication of the diaries of the Dutch Jew Etty Hillesum ("The Thinking Heart"), whose therapist, spiritual teacher, friend and ultimately lover he was.

Spier's book The Hands of Children , which Hertha Levi published after his death in 1944, is now considered a classic in psycho-chirology.

Works

• Julius Spier: The Hands of Children: An Introduction to Psycho-Chirology. at Google Books .

literature

• Klaas AD Smelik, Editor: Etty. The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge UK 2002, Introduction. ISBN 0-8028-3959-2
• Patrick Woodhouse: Etty Hillesum. A Life Transformed. Bloomsbury Academic, London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney 2009, ISBN 978-1-84706-426-4

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaas AD Smelik, Editor: Etty. The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941 - 1943. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge UK 2002, Introduction
2. ↑ Patrick Woodhouse: Etty Hillesum. A Life Transformed. Bloomsbury Academic, London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney 2009, p. 99
3. ↑ ibid, p. 17
4. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.