Oskar Pfister

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Oskar Robert Pfister (born February 23, 1873 in Wiedikon ; † August 6, 1956 in Zurich ; resident in Zurich) was a Swiss Reformed pastor and psychologist .

Life

Oskar Pfister was the son of the reformed pastor Johannes Pfister (1838–1876) and the piano teacher Luise, née. Pfenninger (1843–1918) and was born in Zurich-Wiedikon as the youngest of four brothers. After the father's death in March 1876, the mother, who came from a Pietist family, moved to the Herrenhutter community of Königsfeld in the Black Forest of Baden. He studied Protestant theology , philosophy and psychology at the Universities of Basel , Zurich and Berlin . In 1898 he received his doctorate on Alois Emanuel Biedermann's philosophy of religion at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zurich . In the same year he married Erika Wunderly (1872-1929), who gave birth to their son Oskar in 1899.

From 1897 to 1920 he was pastor in Wald . In 1920 he took over a pastor's position in Zurich, which he held until 1939. Pfister maintained relations with the religious socialists of Leonhard Ragaz . Between 1909 and 1939 he corresponded regularly with Sigmund Freud on theology and psychoanalysis. He was one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis in Switzerland and was part of the Zurich School of Psychoanalysis around Eugen Bleuler and Carl Gustav Jung . In 1919 he was a co-founder of the Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis . He wrote the first theological appraisal of Sigmund Freud's psychology, especially the book The Future of an Illusion . In 1929 his wife died. In 1930 he married Martha Zuppinger-Urner, a widowed cousin who was born in 1898 and who brought two children into the marriage.

In 1934 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Geneva .

From 1939 until his death he lived in Zurich-Witikon.

Aftermath

In memory of Oskar Pfister, the American Psychiatric Association, together with the Association of Professional Chaplains and the Harding Foundation, have been awarding the Oskar Pfister Award since 1983 for exceptional interdisciplinary contributions on religion and psychiatry. The winners include a .: Jerome D. Frank , Victor Frankl , Hans Küng , Oliver Sacks , James W. Fowler , Ana-Maria Rizzuto , Allen E. Bergin and Irvin D. Yalom .

Fonts

  • Christianity and Fear: A Religious Psychological, Historical and Religious Hygienic Investigation. Zurich, Artemis 1944
  • The psychoanalytic method. An empirical systematic presentation. Leipzig. Julius Klinkhardt, 1924. With a foreword by Prof. Dr. S. Freud. 3rd heavily reworked edition. Pedagogy Volume 1. Edited by Prof. Dr. Aloys Fischer and Dr. Alberth Huth.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Schwarz, Oskar Pfister. In: Werner Weber: Helvetic profiles. 47 writers from German-speaking Switzerland since 1800. Artemis Verlag, Zurich / Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7608-0540-X , pp. 169–179
personal data
SURNAME Pfister, Oskar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfister, Oskar Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss pastor and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiedikon
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1956
Place of death Zurich