Leonhard Seif

Alfred Adler and Leonhard Seif (1925)

Leonhard Seif (born January 15, 1866 in Munich ; † 1949 ) was a German neurologist , educational advisor and individual psychologist . He is considered one of the most famous individual psychologists in Germany.

Life

After studying medicine, philosophical and social psychological studies, Leonhard Seif settled in Munich as a neurologist in 1895. He soon saw that many organic diseases had a neurotic cause. His attempt to treat them with the most modern healing methods of the time, hypnosis and suggestion , did not bring the desired success. He therefore tried new paths and founded a local psychoanalytic group in Munich in May 1911, of which Viktor von Gebsattel and Otto Gross belonged. From 1912 onwards, the content-related and personal conflicts between CG Jung and Sigmund Freud intensified, which led to an increasing division within the psychoanalytic movement. Leonhard Seif, who also had a personal relationship with CG Jung, took Jung's side.

At the Fourth International Congress on Psychoanalysis in September 1913, Jung was confirmed as chairman of the International Psychoanalytic Association, but many of Freud's supporters refused to support him and abstained. A final split in the IPA was once again avoided, but the conflict proved to be insoluble. In April 1914, Jung resigned as chairman and withdrew with his supporters from the IPA.

Seif made friends with Alfred Adler , whom Freud had pushed out of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association in 1911 because Seif shared Adler's view that the neurosis had social causes, and in 1920 founded the first German individual psychological local group under the name " Society for Comparative Individual Psychology ". Munich was not only the first, but also the most important, stable and largest local group of individual psychology. It was also referred to as the Vienna branch. In 1922 the First International Congress for Individual Psychology was held in Munich . In that year the first educational counseling center was founded in Munich. Following their example - the opening up of new fields of practice for individual psychology - similar institutions were soon founded at home and abroad. In 1926 Seif co-founded the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy . In 1927 and 1929 he held scientific lectures on his experimental work and psychological, educational and psychotherapeutic courses at Harvard and Boston University at their invitation to doctors and students. In the years 1928 to 1937 he held several lecture cycles at the universities of London , Birmingham and York . The last summer course in England ended a few days before the outbreak of war.

The following important information is still missing in section:

Seif's role in the time of National Socialism, especially in connection with the founding of the so-called Göring Institute

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After 1933, Seif was only able to continue running an educational counseling center with a few close employees. When the National Socialists came to power, the working group for community psychology (Seif) and the working group of the Jungian Gustav Richard Heyers (1890–1967) were converted into the Bavarian branch of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy at the end of 1939 . There a marginal continuity of psychological activity could be preserved, although it was under the auspices of Nazi ideology. The name Alfred Adler was no longer allowed to be mentioned, he was on the list of banned authors and the books on individual psychology were burned . Nevertheless, Seif was able to continue the work without interruption, thanks to which Munich became the basis of the reconstruction in the critical years 1945 and 1946. As early as 1947 there were requests from England to resume summer courses.

plant

Leonhard Seif described the working method and development of the Munich educational counseling center in terms of educational assistance as follows:

“Of course, when they were present during the consultation, everything had to be taken into account that would be of benefit to the child and the development of his sense of community and that would strictly rule out any disadvantage for the child. The participants should become and be a community in the sense that the child and parents, counselors and participants learned to feel embedded in an atmosphere of togetherness, of learning with one another, which made it impossible for everyone to attract attention or to do something important. Theoretical resistance to such a counseling situation was refuted by the practice of success, the promotion of establishing contacts. It wasn't anything particularly new that was happening. After all, all the difficulties of the children took place in the community of the family, the kindergarten, the school, the after-school care center, on the street, among other people. The difference now from this community just described and that in the consultation was that it was a positive atmosphere here , which children and parents affirm and know that one can make mistakes and misunderstand, but also learn from errors and misunderstandings Atmosphere that radiates trust and understands, that is, what the child has lost in his environment. It goes without saying that everything had to be eliminated that could shame the self-esteem of the child or the relatives, or give vanity opportunities. (...)

This public educational counseling , which eventually became a working group for education, proved itself more and more over the years. If its original task was to facilitate the integration of the child into themselves, into the family, school and later into the community, it became - which was not its actual purpose, but only its natural result - of irreplaceable importance for the education of many participants , especially the current and future helpers and employees, a real learning together and growing into this new task. Parents and children felt and knew that they had made understanding friends and no longer had to suffer from helpless loneliness. "

literature

• Leonhard Seif (Ed.): Ways of educational assistance. Results and practical tips from the activities of the Munich working group for education. With contributions by Leonhard Seif and his colleagues Lene Credner, Kurt Seelmann and Alice Lüps, JFLehmanns Verlag, Munich 1952
• Leonhard Seif: The obsessional neurosis. In: Erwin Wexberg (Ed.): Handbuch der Individualpsychologie Vol. 1. Amsterdam 1966, reprint of the Munich 1926 edition, pp. 507-531
• Leonhard Seif: Authority and Education. In: Alfred Adler, Curt Furtmüller (ed.): Healing and education - a book of educational art for doctors and educators. (1914), Frankfurt a. M. 1973, pp. 233-240
• Leonhard Seif: About self-love and vanity. In: Alfred Adler, Curt Furtmüller (ed.): Healing and education: A book of Waldorf education for doctors and educators. (1914), Frankfurt a. M. 1973, pp. 252-258
• Johannes Neumann: The feelings and the self. Individual and Society. Eds. Alfred Adler, Leonhard Seif, Otto Kraus, Vlg. Bergmann, Munich 1921
• Ada Beil: The Creativity of Women , I. Theoretical Part: An Attempt on the Problem of Personality, II. Practical Part: Depicted on the life of the sculptor Emma Cotta with 6 panels, within the individual and community , writings of the International Society for Individual Psychology, published by Dr. Alfred Adler (Vienna), Dr. Leonhard Seif (Munich), Otto Kaus (Berlin), Munich 1926
• Johannes Neumann (Ed.): You and everyday life. A psychology of everyday life. In: Community with friends of individual psychology. Verlag von Martin Warneck, Berlin 1926. - Contributions by Johannes Neumann, Otto Kaus, Kurt Weinmann, Ida Löwy , Ferdinand Birnbaum , Fritz Künkel, Erwin Wexberg, Leonhard Seif, Otto Naegele, Else Freistadt, Ada Beil, Sofie Lazarsfeld and Ludwig Wanger, Else Sumpf, Alfred Adler
• Alfred Adler, Leonhard Seif, Lad. Zilahi (ed.): Self- education of character. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1930