René A. Spitz

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René Arpad Spitz (born January 29, 1887 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † September 14, 1974 in Denver , Colorado , USA ) was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst . He is considered a pioneer in infant research and developmental psychology .

Life

Memorial plaque from the series With Freud in Berlin at Taubertstrasse 5 in Berlin-Grunewald

Spitz was born to Hungarian parents in Vienna and grew up in Budapest . His Jewish family was wealthy. After studying medicine in Lausanne , Berlin and Budapest, where he received his doctorate in 1910, he trained as a psychoanalyst with Sándor Ferenczi . In 1911, Spitz underwent a training analysis with Sigmund Freud . During the First World War he served as a military doctor. In 1924 he moved into a practice in Vienna. At the same time he also practiced in Berlin from 1930. From 1924 to 1928 he worked for the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association (WPV) and in 1930 he became a member of the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG) in Berlin. In Vienna he belonged to the group of young psychoanalysts around Anna Freud and took part in her "children's seminar" (seminar on child psychoanalysis).

In 1932, Spitz moved to Paris , where he taught normal supérieure psychoanalysis and developmental psychology at the École . He also took part in congresses of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society. In 1935 he received a research assignment under Charlotte Bühler in the crèche of the child transfer office of the municipality of Vienna . This was the beginning of his research into infancy.

He moved from Paris to New York in 1938 , where he worked as a training analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute for 17 years . In 1956 he became professor of psychology at the Graduate Faculty of the City College of New York and in 1967 professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado. In 1958 he met Eric Berne . His students also included the psychoanalytically and experimentally oriented infant researcher and developmental psychologist Robert N. Emde .

plant

René A. Spitz was the first to deal with the systematic research into the psychology of infancy and founded the interactionist paradigm in infant research, which puts the study of the social relationships of babies at the center of research and, in addition to the study of cognitive development, is the focus of research to this day dominates this sector.

With his empirical studies he had endeavored to grasp the relationship between the personality of the mother and the development of the child ever more precisely. His investigation methods were direct observation, filming, infant tests and the combination of long-term studies and cross-comparisons. He was thus also one of the first to conduct systematic and empirical research in psychoanalytic infant research, while previously mainly unsystematic observations in everyday life and clinical context were carried out.

Based on cultural comparisons of early childhood experience, he examined the development of human communication , the birth of language and the development of the relationship between mother and child in the first year of life. For Spitz, the interrelationship between mother and child is the key to developing social relationships. According to Spitz, the object relationship develops in the course of the first year of life. It goes through three stages. The concept of the organizers is based on the assumption that in certain age groups there will be maturation processes, sudden changes in the child's organism, which are based on affective indicators such as the social smile (2nd / 3rd month), fear of others (7th / 8th month). Month) or the gesture of no (15th / 18th month).

René Spitz is best known for his empirical studies of disturbed maternal relationships in infants with incoherent stimuli: active and passive rejection of the child, overprotection, alternating hostility and pampering , rejection concealed with friendliness. According to Spitz, such threats to the relationship (object constancy) lead, depending on the type of disturbed object relationship, to various psychological and psychosomatic disorders in the child, e.g. B. infant eczema , anaclitic depression , psychotoxic disorder or even hospitalism .

Publications (selection)

  • Early childhood experience and adult culture among the primitives. Comments on Margaret Mead “Growing up in New Guinea” . International Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna 1935.
  • From infant to toddler. Natural history of mother-child relationships in the first year of life . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-608-91823-X (English first edition: The First Year of Life , 1965). The original study has been referred to as "Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood," in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child , Volume 1 (1945), and "Hospitalism: A Follow-Up Report," in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Volume 2 (1946) published.
  • Anaclitic depression. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child . 1946.
  • The smiling response: a contribution to the ontogenesis of social relations. In: Genetic Psychology Monographs. Volume 34, 1946, pp. 57-125.
  • La perte de la mère par le nourrisson: troubles du développement psycho-somatique . 1948.
  • No and yes. The origins of human communication . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-608-95941-6 (English first edition: No and yes: On the genesis of human communication , 1957).
  • A genetic field theory of ego formation. (Lecture on May 27, 1958), S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1972 (English first edition: A genetic field theory of ego formation , 1959).
  • From dialogue: studies on the origin of human communication and its role in personality formation . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-12-907150-4 .
  • The creation of the first object relationships . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-12-907140-7 .
  • Congenital or Acquired? The twins Cathy and Rosy - a natural history of the human personality and its development . Foreword by Eva Maria Spitz-Blum, Beltz-Verlag, Weinheim / Basel 2000, ISBN 3-407-22045-6 .

literature

  • Empathize, remember, understand: a commemorative publication for René A. Spitz on his 80th birthday. Klett Verlag, Stuttgart 1967, ISBN 3-12-902030-6 .
  • Peter Mantell: René Spitz 1887-1974. Life and work as reflected in his films . ISBN 3-9802359-4-7 .
  • Martin Dornes : The psychology of Rene A. Spitz. An introduction and critical appreciation . Asanger Roland Verlag 1981, ISBN 3-89334-033-5 .
  • Robert N. Emde, Rene Spitz: Dialogues from infancy . International Universities Press, Madison, CT 1984.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ See Claudine Geissmann; Pierre Geissmann: Histoire de la psychoanalysis de l'enfant: mouvements, idées, perspectives . 2nd Edition. Bayard, Paris 2004, p. 503ff.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Spitz, René A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spitz, René Arpad (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1974
Place of death Denver , Colorado, USA