Paul Helwig

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Paul Helwig (born May 27, 1893 in Lübeck , † August 7, 1963 in Munich ) was a German psychologist , philosopher , theater director and screenwriter .

In specialist circles of psychology, Helwig became known in particular for his model of the square of values , based on Aristotle 's considerations “from the center right” , which he presented in his work Characterology . This thinking tool was later made available to a wider public by Friedemann Schulz von Thun as a value and development square .

Life

Paul Helwig was a son of the businessman August Helwig. He studied music at the conservatories in Leipzig and Munich . After his time at the theater, he resumed the philosophy he had already started to study in Cologne and received his doctorate in 1934 under Nicolai Hartmann .

For the last few years he lived as a freelance writer in Munich until his death on August 7, 1963.

Theater and film work

After graduating from the conservatory, he worked for several years in leading positions at the theaters in Eisenach , Heidelberg , Düsseldorf , Breslau and Berlin . During this time and afterwards he wrote various plays, including the comedy Honeymoon , which is occasionally still performed. He was also the co-author of several film scripts and translator of two plays by John Priestley , which he also directed. This theater work contributed to his later fascination with human "acting-in-itself" as an irreducible "primary category of being".

Philosophical considerations

In 1936 he published “Seele als Äußerung”, in which he tried to overcome dualism so that he placed the activity of the organism in relation to the environment as central and replaced the spiritual-material dimension with the inside-outside dimension (which is an experience dimension and not one objective-spatial dimension). This essay, which already bears the characteristics of a psychological analysis, follows on from his 38-page dissertation and clarifies a little the abstract ideas contained therein.

psychology

In 1936 the first version of "Characterology" was published (by Teubner in Leipzig), a book of a completely different kind in which psychological types and clinical pictures are critically discussed. A revised 2nd edition followed in 1951. In it he introduced the value square , an explanatory scheme for the ordering of value-laden terms: every virtue is opposed to a counter- virtue , with the implication that both can degenerate if one is not adequately kept in balance by the other. For example, the striving for stability in the world is also countered by a certain trust and serenity , since otherwise the striving for stability degenerates into convulsiveness and compulsion, or trust into child dependency.

Helwig's preoccupation with the irreducible phenomenon of acting on the environment and on fellow human beings finally led to the idea of ​​“dramaturgical psychology”: The explanation of behavioral phenomena should not, as in depth psychology, be done in the “inner” (the wrongly separating term “psyche “), But in the properties of the action itself. Such a thing not - opportunistically - on the basis of methodological behaviorism , but for reasons of principle, because in the first and last instance everything important for psychology happens“ out there ”, in the meeting of the acting person with the environment. And in doing so, one observes human actions and changes with the distant eyes of a dramaturge.


The behaviorism of Helwig

With his choice to regard the external behavior of humans as the actual subject of psychology, Helwig is just like Skinner a radical one, i. H. principled behaviorist. With the difference, however, that he looks at human activity through the eyes of a director in topics of much larger behavioral units (as stimulus-response). He believes that the interaction between the individual and the environment should be analyzed to the extent that so much “material” (events, consequences, reactions) is thrown up that long-term actions (interactions) can occur - as is the case with the Theater happens and is essential for a good drama and with what life “goes on”. For this, not only the type of actions of the individual is important, but also the degree of resistance they encounter. One limitation of Helwig is that he says little about the conditions that make a person reach for ineffective actions that are not conducive to continued life.

During this time Helwig also practiced her own form of psychotherapy . He worked at the psychosomatic institute in Heidelberg.

Not broken through

To this day Helwig is an isolated and only moderately known personality in psychology, because he did not belong to any current and did not build his own school (with followers), because

  • First, it broke with the depth psychological / psychoanalytic tradition that was strong in Germany at the time
  • second, he worked completely differently from the phenemonologically oriented psychologists like Victor.E. by Gebsattel and Erwin W. Straus .
  • third, despite being related to Skinner, he analyzed behavior differently than the behaviorists.
  • fourth, he practiced existential psychology, but again differently from its actual theorists.
  • fifthly, it played a role that Helwig wrote on an abstract level, introduced his own terminology and is therefore difficult to understand. He also made no effort to join a psychological school.

Works

Fiction

  • Jerika. Novel . Alfred Ibach Verlag, Vienna 1941.
  • Pan-Pan-Potiphar. The abstract lyrics of my cousin Alois Zeitvogel; Poems . Glock & Lutz Verlag, Nuremberg 1962. (illustrated by Julius Nest ).

Film scripts

Non-fiction

  • Characterology. Teubner, Leipzig 1936. 2nd revised edition: Klett, Stuttgart 1951. 3rd revised edition: Klett, Stuttgart 1965. (Afterwards reprinted repeatedly by the Herder library, Freiburg / B.)
  • Dramaturgy of human life . Klett, Stuttgart 1958.
  • The desired and the wanted world. For the psychological characterization of the hysterical and the obsessive-compulsive neurotic . In: psyche ; Vol. 6 (1953), No. 10, pp. 561-576.
  • Love and enmity . Reinhardt, Munich 1964.
  • Psychology without magic. Man in the tension of life's drama. Reinhardt, Munich 1961.
  • The individual relation. A contribution to the dialectic of selfhood. Dissertation. University of Cologne 1934, 38 pp.
  • Soul as an expression. Investigations on the body-soul problem. Teubner, 1936.

Own plays

  • In broad daylight. Comedy in 3 acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1942.
  • The "barbarian". A historical tragic comedy in 5 acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1941.
  • The Eichenacher game of the ten virgins . Kahle Verlag, Eisenach 1922 ( translated and staged together with Conrad Höfer for the performance in July 1921).
  • Ernst aside. Comedy in 3 excerpts . Publishing house "Die Rampe", Hamburg 1949.
  • Honeymoon. Comedy in 3 acts . Meisel, Berlin 1972 (reprint of the Berlin 1939 edition).
  • Gods on vacation. Comedy in one foreplay and three acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1940.
  • Wandering desires. Serious comedy . "Die Rampe" publishing house, Berlin 1940.
  • Krampus and Angelika. Comedy in 3 acts and 1 foreplay . Meisel, Berlin 1964 (reprint of the Berlin 1943 edition).
  • Lucile and Orleans. A dramatic romance in 5 acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1942.
  • Sword of Fame and Love: A Dramatic Romance in 5 Acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1942.
  • The beautiful Maria. Historical comedy in 5 acts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1942.
  • Black magic. Comedy in 3 excerpts . Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1942.

Arrangements of plays

  • Robert Boissy : Jupiter: Comedy in 3 acts ("Jupiter"). Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1947.
  • John Boynton Priestley : Professor Linden Family. A play in 2 lifts (4 images) (“The Linden Tree”). Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1948.
  • John Boynton Priestley: I've been here before. Play in 3 acts ("I have been here before"). Drei Masken Verlag, Berlin 1948.
  • John Boynton Priestley: The Strange City. A game in 3 acts ("They came to a city"). German Laienspiel-Verlag, Weinheim 1958 (former title: Die neue Stadt ).

literature

  • PCH Prudon: Existent psychology in magic . A theory about het menselijke functioneren, met implicaties voor de psychopathologie . FZP-press, Amsterdam 2007 (table of contents (in Dutch) )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Helwig, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helwig, Paul Julius Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychologist, philosopher and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH 7th August 1963
Place of death Munich