Max Levy-Suhl

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Max Levy-Suhl (born April 14, 1876 in Suhl , † September 21, 1947 in Amsterdam ) was a German neurologist and psychoanalyst . Since 1922, Max Levy officially used the name of his hometown Suhl in his double name.

Life

Memorial plaque for Max Levy-Suhl in Bundesallee 156, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, from the Mit Freud series in Berlin

As the third of four sons of the businessman and owner of a leather wholesaler David Levy and his wife Regina, née Rosenthal was born Max Levy on April 14, 1876 in Suhl. His older brothers were Arthur, who died shortly after birth, and Gustav Levy, who later took over the father's business as a merchant. His younger brother Heinrich became a philosopher. The family belonged to the synagogue community that existed in Suhl at that time, in which David Levy had special responsibility as board member.

After attending the higher private boys' school in Suhl and obtaining the upper secondary qualification at the Royal Realgymnasium in Erfurt , Max Levy-Suhl first completed a commercial apprenticeship. In 1897 he passed the Abitur at the Ernestinum Gotha high school. The subsequent medical studies took him to Würzburg, Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, Kiel, and again Berlin and Strasbourg. After obtaining his license to practice medicine in 1903 and completing an ophthalmological doctoral thesis , from 1905 he worked as a volunteer assistant in the laboratory of the psychiatric professor at the Charité , Theodor Draw , and in 1907 took up a position as an assistant doctor at the insane asylum of the city of Berlin in Buch. One of his colleagues there was Alfred Döblin . Since 1909 Levy-Suhl worked as a neurologist with his own practice in Berlin.

On July 18, 1913, he married the pediatrician Hildegard Johanna Perls (born June 6, 1885 in Posen / Poland, † February 24, 1950 in Amsterdam), who also came from a Jewish family . They lived with their adopted daughter Berta from 1914 to 1923 at Kaiserallee (today's Bundesallee ) 156. Max Levy-Suhl was employed as a military doctor during World War I.

In addition to his psychotherapeutic practice, Levy-Suhl gained a reputation in the fields of ophthalmology and youth psychiatric forensics . On the basis of intensive surveys on the moral development of juvenile delinquents , he campaigned for the age limit of criminal responsibility to be raised from 12 to 14 years. This reform was implemented in 1923 with the entry into force of the Juvenile Courts Act , drafted by Gustav Radbruch , with whom Max Levy-Suhl was friends and who corresponded throughout his life. As a sworn expert for the Berlin regional dishes he sat in his expert activities , among others, for the rights of war veterans and workers involved in accidents and demanded equal treatment with private insurance. Together with Alfred Döblin, Karen Horney , Arthur Kronfeld , Johannes Heinrich Schultz u. a. From 1927 he worked in the presidium of the Berlin branch of the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy .

Relationship to psychoanalysis

Levy-Suhl took note of psychoanalysis early on and from 1910 wrote various reviews of the writings of Sigmund Freud and his students. Levy-Suhl emphasized during this time that the Freudian doctrine contained important new insights into psychosomatics and the relationship between sexuality and mental suffering, but at the same time saw it as an "art process" that was not free from subjective arbitrariness. Psychoanalysis reaches its limits where "the ultimate source of symptom production and fixation lies not only in repressed and unloaded affects, but in the hard immutability of existence". Levy-Suhl spoke out against a dogmatic reading of Freud and criticized that psychoanalysis would only benefit the wealthy. So he initially gave preference to hypnosis, with the help of which, according to him, therapeutic effects could be achieved in a short time. In Berlin during the Weimar period , he was considered a leading specialist in this field and bundled his experience in a textbook on the hypnotic healing method and its technology (1922).

Levy-Suhl described his approach to psychoanalysis in his main work on The Psychological Healing Methods of the Doctor (1930). Reservations, especially with regard to Freud's early writings, in which Levy-Suhl saw an overly strictly scientific derivation of the neuroses from instinctual energies , dissolved with Freud's further development of psychoanalysis beyond the pleasure principle and the new, for Levy-Suhl central consideration of conscience . Around 1930 he began a training analysis at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute , which - as he wrote in a letter to Max Eitingon - resulted in a "psychoanalytic change in old age". This was followed by admission to the German Psychoanalytic Society on July 1, 1933.

exile

Due to its membership in the Association of Socialist Physicians Max Levy-Suhl was after the takeover by the Nazis , the insurance license revoked. His wife Hildegard Levy-Suhl was also affected by this repression. Deprived of their professional basis, the couple was forced to emigrate to the Netherlands in November 1933. Max and Hildegard Levy-Suhl founded a psychoanalytic children's home in Amersfoort . In September 1937 they moved to Amsterdam, where Max Levy-Suhl set up a psychoanalytical practice at Brahmsstraat 18.

The "Untertauchhaus" in the Herengracht 287 in Amsterdam (photo from 2011)

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the two managed to go into hiding. Hildegard Gisela Knierim, who came from Germany and had worked as an assistant in Max Levy-Suhl's practice, and her partner, the sculptor Ybe van der Wielen, hid the Levy-Suhl couple in their apartment at 287 Herengracht with the help of Dutch resistance groups .

Max Levy-Suhl died in Amsterdam on September 21, 1947. A letter from the psychoanalyst Oskar Pfister to his colleague Paul Federn in December 1947 provides information about the circumstances of death, which have not yet been clarified in detail :

“Under the Christmas tree I received the tragic news that Dr. Levi-Suhl in the Hague, who had been a morphinist for a long time, committed suicide. I valued him as a thinker. He was a philanthropic seeker of truth, whom the war, and even before nationalism, broke up. "

Max Levy-Suhl, one of the most important Berlin psychotherapists at the beginning of the 20th century, was almost forgotten after the end of the war. It was not until 2013 that an international group of researchers came together that succeeded in largely reconstructing the history of Max Levy-Suhl in various publications. In Bundesallee 156 in Berlin today a plaque commemorates his life and work.

Fonts (selection)

  • The hypnotic healing method and its technique. A theoretical and practical introduction to hypno and suggestion therapy together with a comparative presentation of Freudian psychoanalysis , Enke, Stuttgart 1922.
  • New ways in psychiatry. A comparative consideration of the psychological life of savages and the mental disorders of civilized people, along with a methodological introduction , Enke, Stuttgart 1925.
  • The psychological healing methods of the doctor. A doctrine of the neurotic man , Enke, Stuttgart 1930.

literature

  • Ludger M. Hermanns, Stephan von Minden, Michael Schröter, Harry Stroeken, Andrea Walther: Dr. med. Max Levy-Suhl and his family , Kleine Suhler Reihe (48), Suhl City Administration, Suhl 2016.
  • Ludger M. Hermanns, Michael Schröter, Harry Stroeken: From psychotherapy to psychoanalysis: Max Levy-Suhl (1876-1947) . In: Lucifer-Amor. Journal for the History of Psychoanalysis No. 53, Volume 27 (2014), ISSN  0933-3347 , pp. 141–167. (With complete bibliography of Max Levy-Suhl)
  • Harry Stroeken: The fate of the psychoanalysts who emigrated to the Netherlands. In: Ludger M. Hermanns et al. (Ed.): Psychoanalysis and emigration from Budapest and Berlin, Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 3-95558-040-7 , pp. 139–156.
  • Wietske van der Wielen: The Survival of Max and Hildegard Levy-Suhl in the Amsterdam Underground (1942-1945). In: Lucifer-Amor. Journal for the History of Psychoanalysis No. 59, Volume 30 (2017), ISSN  0933-3347 , pp. 183-188.

Web links

Commons : Max Levy-Suhl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On Heinrich Levy see in detail: Sascha Ziemann: Neo-Kantianism on half stairs. Gustav Radbruch, Heinrich Levy and the spirit of Heidelberg thinking . In: Frank Saliger u. a. (Ed.): Rule of law criminal law: Festschrift for Ulfrid Neumann on his 70th birthday. C. F. Müller, Heidelberg 2017, pp. 493-507, ISBN 978-3-8114-3962-7 .
  2. ↑ Quoted from Ludger M. Hermanns, Stephan von Minden, Michael Schröter, Harry Stroeken, Andrea Walther: Dr. med. Max Levy-Suhl and his family , Kleine Suhler Reihe (48), Stadtverwaltung Suhl, Suhl 2016., p. 55.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Ludger M. Hermanns, Stephan von Minden, Michael Schröter, Harry Stroeken, Andrea Walther: Dr. med. Max Levy-Suhl and his family , Kleine Suhler Reihe (48), Stadtverwaltung Suhl, Suhl 2016., p. 58.
  4. ↑ These connections only became known more than 70 years after what happened in the course of research by the art historian Wietske van der Wielen about her father. See your online publication (in Dutch)
  5. ↑ Max Levy-Suhl's body was found in the Herengracht on September 26, 1947, five days after he was reported missing. This results in the assumed time of death.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Ludger M. Hermanns, Stephan von Minden, Michael Schröter, Harry Stroeken, Andrea Walther: Dr. med. Max Levy-Suhl and his family , Kleine Suhler Reihe (48), Stadtverwaltung Suhl, 2016, p. 61.
    With regard to the informative value of the source, it should be remembered that Pfister described the events from a distance and was at least not properly informed about the place of death .
personal data
SURNAME Levy-Suhl, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Suhl
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1947
Place of death Amsterdam