Marianne L. Simmel

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Marianne Leonore Simmel (born January 3, 1923 in Jena ; † March 24, 2010 in Sandwich , Massachusetts ) was a German-American psychologist.

Life

Marianne Simmel was born in Jena in 1923 as the first of four children to the physician couple Hans Eugen Simmel and Else Rosa Rapp-Simmel. Her grandfather was the sociologist and cultural philosopher Georg Simmel . After the National Socialists came to power in Germany , their family found itself in an increasingly critical situation. In 1934 the family moved to Stuttgart after Marianne's father had lost his position at the University of Jena because of critical statements against National Socialism and had been detained for a week by the SS . Because of the increasing danger to the family, the two daughters and one of the brothers were brought to safety in England in 1938. In the same year, his father was imprisoned in a concentration camp in Dachau for four weeks . In 1939, however, he was able to follow his wife, whom he had sent to England with the three other children in view of the threatening situation with Marianne's second brother Gerhard, via Switzerland to England. The family emigrated from England to the USA in March 1940, where they settled in poor conditions in New York . Marianne contributed to the family support with her earnings as a nanny . Her father died in 1943 at the age of only 53, his health seriously damaged by his imprisonment in the concentration camp; he had contracted larynx tuberculosis in Dachau. Marianne's mother was able to re-establish herself as a doctor in the USA and thus cover the family's livelihood and the children's education costs.

Marianne Simmel studied psychology at Smith College and Harvard University . One of her most important teachers was Fritz Heider . With him she carried out the experiments known as the Heider-Simmel Study , which were published in 1944. They are considered the forerunners of Heider's attribution theory. For this study they made a small film with moving geometric shapes, which is still attracting interest in both research and film art. The viewer of the film involuntarily ascribes intentions and feelings to these characters ("attributes" feelings and motives to them).

Through Heider's mediation, there was also a research collaboration in 1942 and then lifelong friendship and cooperation with Kurt Goldstein . In 1949 Marianne Simmel finally received her doctorate from Harvard University. Her first appointment took her to the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago , followed by a professorship in psychology at Brandeis University . She also worked for the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City . Of her clinical research on cognitive neuropsychology , those on phantom pain deserve mention.

1969-1970 Simmel was the president of Division 10 (Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts) of the American Psychological Association . This also gave her the Farnsworth Award in 2004 .

After retiring from university, she turned to textile design and was very successful in this field for a decade. She settled in Eastham, Massachusetts and created a variety of designs. Some of them are influenced by their previous occupation with perception and neuropsychology. The Cape Cod Modern House Trust (CCMHT) has taken over the archiving of her artistic work and textile designs , in order to later make them available to researchers and art lovers in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) .

selected Writings

  • (with F. Heider) 1944: An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior . American Journal of Psychology 57 (2): 243-259. Full text (PDF; 3.9 MB)
  • 1956: On phantom limbs . American Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 75, 637-47.
  • (with Sarah Counts) 1957: Some stable response determinants of perception, thinking and learning. A study based on the analysis of a single test . Provincetown, Mass .: Journal Press
  • 1959: Phantoms, phantom pain and "denial" . American Journal of Psychotherapy, 13, 603-613.
  • 1962: The reality of phantom sensations . Social Research, 29, 337-356.
  • 1967: The body percept in physical medicine and rehabilitation . Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 8, 60-64.
  • 1968 (as editor and co-author): The Reach of Mind. Essays in Memory of Kurt Goldstein , New York: Springer. In it u. a. the contribution Phantoms following Amputation of the Breast , pp. 101-116.
  • 1986: A Tribute to Eugenia Hanfmann, 1905–1983 . Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 22, 348-356.

Honors

literature

  • C. Golomb: Marianne L. Simmel (1923-2010) . Obituary in American Psychologist 67 (2), February – March 2012, p. 162.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ on this and on the following information see Susanne Ruess, Stuttgart Jewish Doctors during National Socialism , Königshausen & Neumann, 2009, p. 341f.
  2. ^ F. Heider and M. Simmel (1944): An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior. American Journal of Psychology 57 (2): 243-259; see Helmut E. Lück , The Heider-Simmel Study (1944) in more recent replications . Group dynamics and organizational advice, 37 (2), pp. 185–196.
  3. ↑ See The Orphan Film Symposium: Perceptions of the Heider-Simmel Film ; see also Gordon / Roemmele 2014: An Authoring Tool for Movies in the Style of Heider and Simmel (PDF; 471kB).
  4. ↑ see CAPE COD REPORTS, May 27, 2010 ; and: The Orphan Film Symposium: Perceptions of the Heider-Simmel Film ; Cape Cod Modern House Trust: http://ccmht.org/ ; Provincetown Art Association and Museum: https://www.paam.org/

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Simmel, Marianne L.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simmel, Marianne Leonore (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American psychologist and textile designer
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Jena
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 2010
Place of death Sandwich , Massachusetts