Salomea Kempner

Salomea Kempner (born March 16, 1880 in Płock , Russian Empire ; died 1940 or later in Poland ) was a Polish psychoanalyst and one of the most important women in the founding phase of psychoanalysis.

Life

Kempner studied medicine in Bern and Zurich and wrote her dissertation in 1909 with the title Experiments for the microscopic detection of anesthesia of the nerves . From 1912 to 1921 she was an assistant doctor at the cantonal insane asylum in Rheinau , Switzerland. In 1919 she joined the Swiss Society for Psychoanalysis , and in 1922 - at the same time as Lou Andreas-Salomé - she was accepted into the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association and in 1923 caused a sensation and high recognition there with her lecture The Oral Sadism . The text appeared in 1925 as a contribution to oral eroticism in the international journal for psychoanalysis and is the only serious scientific discussion of this topic to date. In it, Kempner describes the case of a patient who suffers from severe vomiting and identifies so strongly with her own father that she has to reject her own femininity and suppress any desire to have children .

In 1923 Kempner moved to Berlin to work at the Berlin Psychoanalytical Institute . In 1925 she joined the Berlin Psychoanalytical Association , which was renamed the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) in 1926 and brought into line in 1933. In 1934, as a “foreign Jew”, she was forbidden to continue working in the Berlin Polyclinic. In 1935 she and the other remaining Jews - on the part of the "Aryanized" board of directors under Felix Boehm and Carl Müller-Braunschweig - were advised to leave the DPG "voluntarily".

But Kempner refused to emigrate and stoically took note of the acts of persecution. Until 1938 she carried out training analyzes in her apartment. Her analysands included Adelheid Lucy Koch (1896–1980), who after emigrating - alongside Marie Langer - became known as the first psychoanalyst in Latin America, and the two Norwegians Hjordis Simonsen (1899–1980) and Nic Waal (1905–1960). She stayed in Berlin until 1940, after which she was seen in the Warsaw ghetto , and finally her trail is lost.

Publications

• Contribution to oral eroticism. IZP 11, 1925, 69-77.
• Some remarks on oral erotism. IJP 6, 1925, 419-429.

About Salomea Kempner

• Karen Brecht, Volker Friedrich, Ludger M. Hermann, Isidor J. Kaminer and Dierk H. Juelich (eds.): "Here life goes on in a very strange way ..." On the history of psychoanalysis in Germany. Catalog and collection of materials for the [eponymous] exhibition on the occasion of the 34th Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPV) in Hamburg from July 28th to 2nd. August 1985. Kellner, Hamburg 1985
• Volker Friedrich: From Psychoanalysis to the "Great Treatment": Psychoanalysts under National Socialism . In: Political Psychology. Volume 10, No. 1, 1989
• Lilli Gast: Lines of Flight - Paths into Exile . In: Forum of Psychoanalysis. Volume 15, No. 2, July 1999, pp. 135-150.
• Elke Mühlleitner: Biographical Lexicon of Psychoanalysis. Tübingen 1992
• Elke Mühlleitner: Kempner, Salomea. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , p. 362f.
• Regine Lockot: The Purification of Psychoanalysis. Tubingen 1994
• Elisabeth Roudinesco and Michel Plon: Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Vienna, New York 2004

Web links

• Psychoanalysts in Europe. Biographical lexicon.
• Extract on Salomea Kempner (matriculation nos. 12488 and 16846) from the matriculation edition of the University of Zurich (accessed April 19, 2016).