Margarete Mitscherlich

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Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen , b. Nielsen (born July 17, 1917 in Gravenstein ; † June 12, 2012 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German psychoanalyst , doctor and author of numerous books.

Mitscherlich wrote together with her husband, the doctor and psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich , the book The Inability to Mourn , which sparked discussions in 1967. Using the example of Germany's National Socialist past and the inadequate debate and coping in the Adenauer era , they examined the defensive attitude of individuals and the masses towards guilt and complicity in political crimes.

Life

Youth and Education, 1917–1951

Margarete Nielsen was born as the daughter of a Danish country doctor and a German school principal in Gravenstein, Schleswig-Holstein (since 1920 Gråsten, Denmark). After graduating from high school in Flensburg , she studied medicine and literature at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg . In 1947, the 30-year-old got to know the married psychoanalyst and social psychologist Alexander Mitscherlich , who was 11 years older than him, at the psychosomatic clinic in Heidelberg, which he directed, and gave birth to their son in 1949. She received her doctorate in 1950 from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen .

In 1951 Nielsen began her psychoanalytic training at the psychosomatic clinic, which she continued in Stuttgart and London.

Marriage and research, 1955–1976

Nielsen and Mitscherlich married in 1955. At that time, both studied together the mass delusion of the Nazi era . In 1967 the couple moved to Frankfurt am Main , where Mitscherlich-Nielsen taught at the Sigmund Freud Institute , which was founded in 1960 . Like her husband, she was also active in training analysis . The researcher couple wrote the book The Inability to Mourn. Basics of Collective Behavior (1967). In this work they asked whether the human being did not represent “one of the most serious mistakes in evolution”, “through which the principle of the living strives towards its abolition”. The reactions ranged from indignation to thoughtfulness.

In 1972 Mitscherlich-Nielsen's publication Must we hate? , in which she dealt with her own research. A few years later she dealt with the problem of idealization in her anthology Das Ende der Vorbilder (1978) . She advocated the initial thesis: “We all need ideals, role models, goals that we orientate ourselves by and that we can strive to achieve. Without it we are exposed to a feeling of emptiness and the lively interest in the things of the world and in our fellow human beings is lost. "

Among Mitscherlich-Nielsen's numerous other publications, the book The Peaceful Woman (1985) stands out, in which she examined the role behavior of women in politics. As a sequel, the work On the Mühsal der Emanzipation (1990) appeared later .

Edition and Practice, 1982–2012

From 1982 Mitscherlich-Nielsen published the magazine Psyche founded by her husband . In her practice for psychoanalysis in Frankfurt's Westend , she treated both women and men who were interested in education about their emotional life, about the unconscious motives of their behavior, that is, interested in their individual emancipation . In 1977, in the first issue of the women's magazine Emma, ​​she publicly stated: “I am a feminist .” This is how she defined herself well into old age. In 2004, the 87-year-old worked with patients twice a week at the Sigmund Freud Institute, and held "occasional sessions" until she died at the age of 94.

Memberships

Margarete Mitscherlich belonged to the German and the International Psychoanalytical Association and was a member of the PEN Center Germany and temporarily on the advisory board of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research . Margarete Mitscherlich had been a member of the board of trustees of the medico international foundation since 2004 .

Awards and honors

criticism

Political scientist Ljiljana Radonić writes that Mitscherlich portrayed women in her book The Peaceful Woman one-sidedly as victims of National Socialism and applied precisely the defense against guilt that she had reflected in detail in the inability to mourn . In her work Die Friedensfertige Antisemitin “Radonic disproves Margarete Mitscherlich's theses on the victim myth and the peaceful nature of 'women', which can be regarded as exemplary for how the women's movement deals with the role of 'women' in NS and its anti-Semitism ...”. Radonic also believes in her study that the authoritarian personality basically has to be gender undefined, because both men and women with an authoritarian personality structure rebelled conformistically and projected repressed impulses onto outgroups . For example, the way in which anti-Semitism works is fundamentally the same for men and women.

The sociologist Gerhard Amendt criticized the lack of scientific evidence of Mitscherlich's theses and explained the success of the book by stating that it “corresponded to the inner wish of most women's movements that it should be so”.

Interviews

Fonts

  • together with Alexander Mitscherlich, the inability to mourn. Basics of collective behavior ; 1967
  • together with Alexander Mitscherlich, The Idea of ​​Peace and Human Aggression ; 1969
  • together with Alexander Mitscherlich, A German way of loving ; 1970
  • Do we have to hate ; 1972
  • The end of the role models ; 1978
  • The peaceful woman ; 1985
  • The future is female ; 1987
  • Memory work ; 1987
  • About the toil of emancipation ; 1990
  • We have a contact tabu: MM and Brigitte Burmeister, 1991, Hamburg, KleinVerlag, ISBN 3-922930-03-4
  • The end of the role models. The benefits and disadvantages of idealization. , Revised New edition (October 1990)
  • Memory Work - On Psychoanalysis of Inability to Mourn . Frankfurt am Main 1993
  • Autobiography and life's work of a psychoanalyst , Picus Verlag, ISBN 3-85452-518-4 , 2006
  • An indomitable woman. In conversation with Kathrin Tsainis and Monika Held . Diana Verlag 2007
  • The radicalism of old age. Insights from a Psychoanalyst . 5th edition, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-049116-9
  • A love for yourself that makes you happy . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013. ISBN 3-596-19654-X

literature

Movies

  • With quarrel and soul. The psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich. Documentary film, Germany, 1998, 43:30 min., Script and direction: Helga Dierichs, production: hr , summary by ARD .
  • Presence of Mind - The Psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich. Documentary, Germany, 2005, 45 min., Script and director: Birgit Schulz, production: Bildersturm, arte , WDR , summary .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franziska Augstein : On the death of Margarete Mitscherlich: The great woman of psychoanalysis. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of June 12, 2012.
  2. Margarete Mitscherlich died. Zeit Online from June 13, 2012 (accessed June 17, 2012)
  3. Jan Feddersen : On the death of Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen: The women movement. In: Taz of June 13, 2012.
  4. So the summary in: Margarete Mitscherlich , Internationales Biographisches Archiv, 28/2011 from July 12, 2011 (rw). Supplemented by news from the MA journal up to week 24/2012, in the Munzinger archive , accessed on June 15, 2012 ( beginning of the article freely available)
  5. Jürgen Kaube : The discrete charm of psychoanalysis. In: FAZ from June 12, 2012, obituary.
  6. ↑ Presence of Mind - The Psychoanalyst Margarete Mitscherlich. Documentary, 2005, production: arte, WDR.
  7. Felix Franklin: Margarete Mitscherlich is dead . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . June 12, 2012.
  8. Jörn-Peter Leppien: Margarethe Mitscherlich: The border region taught them tolerance. In: shz.de. Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag , June 26, 2012, accessed on July 16, 2016 .
  9. Politeia weekly calendar ( Memento from August 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Frauengeschichte.uni-bonn.de, archived by Internet Archive
  10. ^ Tony Sender Prize of the City of Frankfurt.
  11. Tony Sender Prize, Frankfurt honors Margarete Mitscherlich ( memento of October 1, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Hessischer Rundfunk , November 16, 2005, archived by Internet Archive
  12. Alice Schwarzer : Laudation for the Tony Sender Prize to Dr. Margarete Mitscherlich ( memento from September 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) , 2005.
  13. Ljiljana Radonic: The peaceful anti-Semite? Critical theory about gender relations and anti-Semitism. Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 2004, p. 162.
  14. Renate Göllner: The peaceful anti-Semite? A book by Ljiljana Radonic . Review, in: Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft (Hrsg.): Zwischenwelt . Magazine. H. 1/2, 2005 link, at Café Critique
  15. ^ Gerhard Amendt : Women's Movement and Anti-Semitism: The complicity of women in the Nazi era. In: The Jewish Echo . Vienna, Vol. 57, 2008, pp. 110–117.
  16. Ruth Klüger. Review in Die Welt (Literary World), April 20, 2013.