Oskar N. Sahlberg

Oskar N. Sahlberg (* 1932 in Niesky ; † August 23, 2005 in Berlin ) was a German literary scholar , art historian and psychotherapist . He conducted research on perinatal and prenatal psychology and most recently on the psychology of religion . He presented numerous publications, broadcasts and essays on alchemy , Buddha , Jesus , Goethe , Picasso , Edgar Poe , Karl May and others. Most recently he worked as a teacher and freelance science journalist in Berlin.

Live and act

Born in 1932 in Niesky, Silesia, Sahlberg came to Munich from a childhood that was bitterly shaped by Nazi dictatorship, war and flight . There he studied in all directions ( Romance studies , German , English , philosophy and art history ) until he could no longer stand the climate of the German Adenauer restoration.

Sahlberg traveled around the world, to Paris and Italy , Cairo and Calcutta , Africa and Asia , and in recent years also to America .

After completing his doctorate on the poet Théophile Gautier , he had lived in Berlin, the beloved “junk town”, since the 1970s, and penetrated the fantasy worlds of Benn ( Wo Lust und Leiche bekt , 1977), Baudelaire ( Baudelaire and his muse on the Weg zur Revolution , 1980) or Karl May ( Der Großmystiker Karl May , 2004), illuminated the complex psychological creative process of Picasso's Guernica or explored meditation as a way of self-awareness in Zen or with Indian gurus .

Oskar Sahlberg loved the emphasis of great poets very much and carried it out in a rousing manner: "The evening on the island of Palau is red and the shadows are sinking."

The culmination of creativity: regeneration therapy

His work most recently culminated in the monumental work Journeys to God and Return to Life , published in 2004 , in which he traced the depth psychology of religious experience.

Jesus and Buddha

Ludwig Janus wrote in his foreword:

“With his book Journeys to God and Return to Life , Oskar N. Sahlberg succeeded in advancing the depth-psychological development of the religious using the example of the founders of religions Jesus and Buddha . With the assumption that religious phenomena were essentially early childhood projections, Freud had opened up a new perspective for psychological observation. He had the father relationship in mind, while Jung was also concerned with the mother relationship. In the first half of the last century, for reasons of patriarchal mentality and real unfamiliarity with the psychobiology of early development, the fact that crucial elements of religious experience refer to prenatal and birth experience, as formulated by the psychoanalysts Rank and Graber , could not yet be made public Find discourse. The greater openness of post-modern mindset has enabled new approaches as proposed by Sloterdijk in the 8th chapter of its spheres I have been tapped. The root cause of religious experience in the prenatal 'strong relationship' is made clear by many examples. ... Sahlberg combines the vivid and dramatic narration of the lives of Jesus and Buddha with the earliest motives that are revealed in their visions . They are, as it were, x-ray images of the unconscious that reveal the feelings of the uterine phase. "

- Ludwig Janus : From the preface to Reisen zu Gott ... , 2004

Therapeutic scenarios

Sahlberg emphasized at the beginning of his book that his newly gained insights came from and aimed at therapeutic practice:

“My book comes from therapeutic practice and aims at it. I believe that Jesus and Buddha are not only of historical, theoretical interest. Even today there are still many unwanted children who, as adults, suffer from compulsive suicide and seek redemption. The fantasies in their unconscious resemble those of Jesus and Buddha. The stories of the two of them can be helpful in making them aware of them in therapy; they can serve to clarify one's own unconscious.

The way leads first - as with Jesus and Buddha - to the trauma , the conception , which had become a torment and which must be suffered completely. This is where the wish for its termination is hidden: The suicide wish, which is the wish to suspend conception, is fulfilled, not real, not acted out, but imagined in the protected room of therapy . In the affirmed experience of death, conception is reversed; the pain dissolves.

Then something new appears: the feeling of being eternal and infinite, of having the omnipotence to be like God. Jesus and Buddha show us that. One can try to imitate them: imitation, identification. ' Imitatio Jesu Christi ' was said in the Middle Ages; a Buddhist wants to become a Buddha.

Now the way - tantric-alchemical - goes forward again to the new generation. In doing so, one discovers that conception was good at heart. It was only covered with trauma like a shadow; however, the fusion of the cell nuclei cannot be disturbed; this is where the primal force of nature, evolution, unfolds. The further development of the embryo is the result.

In tantra and alchemy , aggression becomes constructive with conception ('constructive aggression' is a central term in ' dynamic psychiatry ' Günter Ammons ). The destructive instinct, the death instinct , Thanatos (as Freud says), is again in the service of the instinct for life, of eros. God becomes active again in man.

The human being must unite and reconcile the parents from whom he has arisen and from whom he consists, so that he can live from their energies. The union takes place in the depths of the unconscious, in which the father is the father god and the mother the mother goddess.

If man heals God, the creation, inside, he can - I hope - also end its destruction on the outside and heal the world and society. The journey to God would have an existential meaning. This book should serve as a travel guide, as a guide to a return to life. "

- Oskar N. Sahlberg : Travel to God and return to life ... , 2004

Own psychotherapy

In the epilogue of his book, Sahlberg explained how he succeeded in working through his own life story with the help of his new theories and therapeutic practice and in healing the traumas he had suffered:

“This book was written in the final phase of my own psychotherapy . I discovered characters that had been part of my life and had a great effect - some destructive, some healing. As I examined these inner companions, making their fates clear to me, I began to understand myself. I found the basic pattern of trauma and attempt at healing; it has a twofold stratification: origin in the child and repetition in the adult. When I had grasped these connections based on the figures, it became possible for me to apply my knowledge to myself and to heal myself.

I first outline my beginnings with childhood and adolescence, then the path to therapy that led to the creation of the book, and finally my healing.

1. Childhood between the cross and the concentration camp ...

2. Trimurti , Marx , Freud and Jung , Bhagwan , Grof ... I wanted Medicine study and psychiatrists are ... I gave up medical school, wrote me a language ... I was tour leader ... Later I worked for two winter in India ... when I was thirty beginning, I returned to Germany, studied, made state exam and wrote a dissertation ... I started a psychotherapy ... I worked as a teacher in Regensburg ... a few years later I went to Berlin, worked for a few semesters at the university, then got a part-time job at a newly opened school ... I met a former concentration camp prisoner, a communist, interviewed him and wrote his story ... I got better from 1982 through rebirthing and bioenergetics in the sannyasins Dwari and Devapath. In Bhagwan's books I discovered a new way of looking at life, free from Western pessimism and nihilism . In the spring of 1986 I met Günter Ammon ... The death of my mother in the summer of 1986 triggered a new crisis ... After the fall of the Wall , school became restless. Bloody fights, knife fights. I spoke to the students about non-violent conflict resolution ...

3. The making of the book ...

4. Regeneration therapy ... Repeat creation in order to heal the soul, in order to reconnect with the energy of the origin, in order to find Father Heaven and Mother Earth in oneself. Gaining the consciousness of creation, the feeling of the first beginning: a miracle and a complete affirmation - feeling the great mystery and the astonishment of infinity. Healing of the self and self-knowledge coincide here. You seem to be the goal of the deepest pursuit. If it is achieved, the patient and therapist, student and teacher, are filled with shared joy.

5. The International Society for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine ... "

- Oskar N. Sahlberg : Epilogue: Review and Outlook. Regeneration Therapy , 2004

evaluation

Harald Eggebrecht : “The literary scholar, historian, psychotherapist, world traveler Oskar Sahlberg died… in his Berlin apartment surrounded by his impressive library. The variety of topics corresponded to the enormous range of his interests. These ranged from the origins of human cultural history to the latest approaches in psychotherapy , and included intensive preoccupation with politics and art , with religions and their founders as well as with the most varied types of literature and music . Sahlberg's thinking revolved tirelessly and curiously around fantasy as a powerhouse of artistic creativity and spiritual healing , or, in its plastic formulation, around 'the self-creation of genius'. … Oskar Sahlberg was, to put it in the old-fashioned way, a polyhistor , unforgettably captivating as a teacher, view broader and text opener, as a contentious discussant and exciting narrator, as a euphoric clown and ironic self-promoter and as a friend. "

Works

Monographs

As an author

• Themes and symbols from Théophile Gautier's “Émaux et camées” (diss.), Munich 1970.
• Gottfried Benn's fantasy world - “Where lust and corpse beckons” . Edition text and criticism, München 1977.
• Baudelaire and his muse on the way to revolution . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980.
• Travel to God and return to life. Depth Psychology of Religious Experience . Psychosozial-Verlag ("Imago" series), Giessen 2004, ISBN 978-3-8980-6300-5 .

As editor

• Charles Baudelaire: Poems of the Revolution . Edited by Oskar Sahlberg, Berlin 1977.
• François-René de Chateaubriand : The Natchez . Edited and with an afterword by Oskar Sahlberg, Freitag Verlag, Berlin 1982.
• Théophile Gautier: In search of elsewhere. Edited and with an afterword by Oskar Sahlberg, 2 volumes, Berlin 1983 and 1984.

Articles in magazines and edited volumes

To National Socialism

• Petty bourgeoisie from within . In: Kursbuch 45/1976.
• An afternoon in Sachsenhausen . In: Context 2, Munich 1978.

To Gottfried Benn

• "Sheaves of transfigured lust". On the topicality of Gottfried Benn's early work , in: die horen 106/1977.
• Gottfried Benn's Psychotherapy with Hitler , in: Walter Schönau (Ed.): Literary Psychological Studies and Analyzes , Amsterdam 1983.

To Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Psychoanalysis , in: Harald Eggebrecht (ed.): Goethe - A monument becomes alive , Munich: Piper 1982, pp. 38–60 (in conversation with Mathias Greffrath ).

To Pablo Picasso

• Picasso's GUERNICA: Dionysus and the Sphinx . In: Carl Pietzcker et al. (Hrsg.): Freiburg literature psychological talks 4 , Würzburg 1985.
• Picasso. Revolution as a birth. In: Klaus Evertz, Ludwig Janus (ed.): Art Analysis , Heidelberg 2002.

To Karl May

• Therapist Kara Ben Nemsi , in: Harald Eggebrecht (Ed.): Karl May, the Saxon fantastic. Studies on life and work , Frankfurt 1987, pp. 189–212, therein:
  • 1. The discovery of May's fantasy world by Schmidt , Wollschläger , Bach (p. 189 ff.)
  • 2. The therapies in the " Silver Lion " and in " Ardistan and Dschinnistan " (p. 192 ff.)
  • 3. From therapist to prophet (p. 202 ff.)
• The "grand mystic" Karl May. The dreams of conception and birth of the son and the father. "In the realm of the silver lion". “Ardistan and Dschinnistan” , in: Meredith McClain, Reinhold Wolff (eds.): Karl May im Llano estacado (on the symposium of the Karl May Society in Lubbock / USA 2000). Hansa Verlag, Husum 2004, pp. 243-275.

To Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

• A day in paradise , in: Eva-Maria Knapp (Ed.): EinsSein und Innewerden , Frankfurt 1988.

psychotherapy

• The interaction between society and psyche as the core of Freud's literary theory . In: Lendemains 5/1980.
• The self-creation of the genius. Elements of a grammar of the artistic imagination . In: J. Cremerius et al. (Hrsg.): Freiburg literature psychological discussions 4 , Würzburg 1985.
• Did you meet god? In: Eva-Maria Knapp (Ed.): Wahn and Sinn , Frankfurt 1991.
• Rebirth yourself. Experience with holotropic therapy . In: Ludwig Janus (Ed.): Modes of manifestation of prenatal and perinatal experience in psychotherapeutic settings , Heidelberg 1991.
• Trust a new view of the day! In: H.-H. Herchen (Ed.): Discovering tomorrow , Frankfurt 1993.
• Alchemy as psychotherapy. The creation of the homunculus as a repetition of the first trimester of pregnancy , in: Rainer G. Appell (Ed.): Homeopathy between Heilkunde und Heilkunst , Heidelberg 1997.

Dynamic psychiatry

• Police raid and androgynous revolution . In: Dynamic Psychiatrie 19 (1986) issue 2/3.
• The creative process and its pre- and perinatal roots . In: Dynamic Psychiatrie 21 (1988) Issue 3/4.
• Psychosis therapy in Balzac's "Book of Mysticism" . In: Dynamic Psychiatrie 24 (1991) issue 5/6.

International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine (IJPPPM)

• The rebirth from the heart. Healing through redesigning conception, implantation, childbirth , in: IJPPPM 6 (1994) 3.
• Buddha's prenatal self. Gem in the lotus , in: IJPPPM 10 (1998) 1.
• The Prenatal Self Becoming Conscious. Baptism of Christ. Lotus-Vision of Buddha , in: IJPPPM 11 (1999) 1 ( online version ).
• God in Auschwitz. An LSD therapy , in: IJPPPM 11 (1999) 4.
• Goethe's Faust. Homunculus and the New Generation of Sister Beloved , in: IJPPPM 13 (2001) 1/2.
• Crucifixion and Psychotherapy , in: IJPPPM 13 (2001) 3/4.
• From trauma to germ cell maturation. New beginning and transmission , in: IJPPPM 14 (2002) 1/2.
• Picasso's GUERNICA series. From stillbirth to self-generation. Great Mother, Goddess of Enlightenment. A therapeutic model , in: IJPPPM 14 (2002) 3/4 (there also an English version).

Yearbook for psychohistorical research

• The Judeo-Christian roots of the European superego. Last Judgment (Matthew 25): The father of the virgin mother. From Jesus Christ to prenatal psychology , in: W. Kurth, L. Janus (Ed.): Yearbook for psychohistorical research , Vol. 2, Heidelberg 2000 ( online version ).
• Conscious and unconscious fascination of martyrdom , in: U. Ottmüller, W. Kurth (Hrsg.): Yearbook for psychohistorical research , Vol. 3, Heidelberg 2003.
• The experience of God in psychohistory and in the three Semitic religions , in: L. Janus, W. Kurth (Hrsg.): Yearbook for psychohistorical research , Vol. 4, Heidelberg 2004.

Obituary for Wolf-Dieter Bach

• "Knowledge as a living experience". Wolf-Dieter Bach and Karl May (with photo), in: Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft No. 137, September 2003, pp. 35–41 ( online version ).

Radio contributions

• Buddha. Nirvana - Karuna. The two stages of enlightenment , Sender Free Berlin , December 29, 1994 (in conversation with Eberhard Sens).
• Jesus. The only-born son who is in his father's lap , Sender Free Berlin, December 29, 1994.

literature

• Ludwig Janus : How the soul is created. Our psychological life before, during and after the birth (1991) , Heidelberg: Matthes Verlag 2011.
• Ludwig Janus: The psychoanalysis of prenatal lifetime and birth (1989) , Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2000.
• Ludwig Janus: The soul space of the unborn. Prenatal Psychology and Therapy , Düsseldorf: Walter Verlag 2000.
• Harald Eggebrecht: The wide view. On the death of fantasy researcher Oskar Sahlberg , in: KMG-Nachrichten 146, IV. Quarter 2005, p. 26 ( online version ).
• Johannes Fabricius: Alchemy. Origin of depth psychology , Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2015.

Web links

• Literature by and about Oskar N. Sahlberg in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/catalog/autoren.php?author_id=1405
2. ↑ Dynamic Psychiatry 21 (1988) 326.
3. ↑ Sahlberg: “At the same time [1955] I began to work as a tour guide, later spent two winters in Cairo, two more in India : We [Bach and I] were in euphoria, lived our dreams, shared them with us in letters . Reality caught up with us again, we came back to Germany. ... I passed a state examination ... “(in the obituary for Wolf-Dieter Bach , 2003, p. 35).
4. ↑ http://www.kulturtasche.de/gedichte/ged_text.htm
5. ↑ Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 26, 2005, page 13.
6. ↑ See Dorothee Sölle : Die outward journey. To the religious experience. Texts and reflections , Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag 1975, p. 1: “Christian faith accentuates the 'return journey' into the world and its responsibility. But he needs a deeper assurance than that which we obtain in action: the 'journey there'. "
7. ↑ Ludwig Janus , b. August 21, 1939, grew up in Essen, studied psychology and medicine in Munich, Essen and Göttingen. Psychoanalytical training in Göttingen and Heidelberg. Since 1975 psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Heidelberg. Lecturer and training analyst. Past-President of the International Study Group for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine ( ISPPM ) (www.isppm.de), Past-President of the German Society for Psychohistorical Research (www.psychohistorie.de). Member of psychoanalytic ( DPG , DGPT ) and other specialist societies (www.ludwig-janus.de).
8. ^ Oskar N. Sahlberg: Journeys to God and Return to Life. Depth psychology of religious experience , Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2004, p. 11.
9. ^ Oskar N. Sahlberg: Journeys to God and Return to Life. Depth psychology of religious experience , Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2004, p. 24 f. and 31.
10. ↑ Travel to God and return to life. Depth psychology of religious experience , Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2004, p. 371 ff.
11. ↑ KMG -Nachrichten 146, IV. Quarter 2005, p. 26.
12. ↑ Regarding the dissertation , Sahlberg commented: “I followed the formal examination with the psychoanalytic one; this part did not get permission to print. "( Reisen zu Gott ... , 2004, p. 422)
13. ↑ Sahlberg: “Since my Baudelaire book contained too much psychoanalysis , it was not accepted for habilitation (despite positive reports from Alfred Lorenzer and Klaus Holzkamp ) . Fortunately, I say today. "( Reisen zu Gott ... , 2004, p. 422)
14. ↑ Product description : “Religious experience is a reconnection with the energies of the source, which are called God. In a journey to God, birth and conception are re-experienced. The unconscious rises into consciousness. The cause of the experience is early trauma, an almost fatal mental injury, which is healed in this way. Sahlberg first shows this process in Buddha and Jesus. They created religions of redemption from suffering, of detachment from earthly life. Later, their teachings changed. In Christian alchemy there was a return to life, of which Goethe is an example. Something similar developed in Buddhist tantra, for which Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh stands. The author also explains trauma healing to Ernst Jünger , Ka-Tzetnik 135 366 and Pablo Picasso . The investigated figures also reflected the conflicts in their societies and offered solutions. Depth psychology captures both the postnatal unconscious, which Freud discovered, and the birth and prenatal unconscious, which was researched by O. Rank, GH Grabner, St. Grof, J. Fabricius, L. Janus and others. Sahlberg opens our eyes to the effects of the earliest influences on social structures and processes. "
15. ↑ Sahlberg: “ Sheela , who had set up Rajneeshpuram , left it in September 1985 because she found the money demands from Rajneesh absurd. There was a scandal, a media spectacle. Rajneesh said now that Sheela turned Rajneeshpuram into a fascist forced labor camp. That was absurd. In 1981 I reported on the big sannyas meeting in Berlin, Orange Connection , for NDR ; a publisher asked me for a larger report. To do this, I went to Rajneeshpuram in August 1985. Shortly afterwards the scandal, my book was canceled. Years later I summarized my observations; turned against the general devaluation, I took the provocative title A day in paradise . (In: EinsSein und Sensewerden (Ed.) Eva-Maria Knapp. Frankfurt 1988.) I also thought of Proust : 'Les paradis sont toujours des paradis perdus'. By leaving his city and being arrested, Rajneesh sealed its end. He must have lost interest. Was he disappointed in the difficult women? Laxmi had schizophrenic traits, Vivek later committed suicide, Sheela left him. - Rajneeshpuram was a realization of utopia : the new Jerusalem , a heavenly city in the desert (built according to modern ecological principles). … For Sloterdijk , the time in Poona brought a 'jump out of old European melancholy and out of the German masotheorie cartel'. Sloterdijk: self-experiment . Munich 2000. p. 105: 'I still consider Rajneesh to be one of the greatest figures of the century ... we will never see his own kind again'. … On the revolutionary effect of Rajneesh: Swami Satyananda (Jörg Andrees Elten): Very relaxed in the here and now . Reinbek 1982. "( Journeys to God ... , 2004, p. 407 f.)
16. ↑ http://www.mattes.de/buecher/praenatale_psychologie/0943-5417.html
17. ↑ https://www.psychosozial-verlag.de/2369