HH Foulkes

HH Foulkes

SH Foulkes (originally Siegmund Heinrich Fuchs ; born September 3, 1898 in Karlsruhe , † July 8, 1976 in London ) was a German-British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who had to emigrate to Great Britain in 1933 because of his Jewish origins. In 1938 he took British citizenship and the English-sounding name Foulkes.

Life

Foulkes studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich and Frankfurt am Main. He completed a psychiatric training with Otto Pötzl in Vienna and a neurological training with Kurt Goldstein , whose assistant he was for two years. In this way he got to know gestalt psychology , which would prove to be very important for his later group therapy approaches. Through his interest in psychological problems he came into contact with the works of Sigmund Freud and finally moved to Vienna, where he underwent a training analysis with Helene Deutsch . His control analyst was Hermann Nunberg . In Vienna he also took part in the technical seminar led by Wilhelm Reich as part of his psychoanalytic training . In 1930 he joined the psychoanalytic institute in Frankfurt am Main. He later became head of the outpatient clinic of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute , which was housed in the same building as the later famous Institute for Social Research . Here he came into contact with Max Horkheimer , Theodor W. Adorno , Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse . He was also close friends with the sociologist Norbert Elias . The collaboration with him also had a great influence on the therapeutic concepts he developed later. From him he took over, among other things, the basic idea of ​​the primary sociality of the individual, his existential group-relatedness and embedding in a transpersonal, cultural matrix. For a short time he was head of the outpatient clinic of the psychoanalytic institute in Frankfurt. In 1933 he emigrated to London via Geneva and Paris at the invitation of Ernest Jones and settled in Exeter as a psychoanalyst. In 1938 he adopted British citizenship and the name Foulkes . In the fall of 1940 he was drafted into the military. In the same autumn he had the idea of ​​gathering his patients in the waiting room and letting them associate freely. He then knew that he had found something new. "Today was a historic moment in psychiatry, but nobody knows about it".

“As a Wehrmacht psychiatrist in 1942 he introduced group work on a psychoanalytical basis to a large extent in Northfileld, the then center for the training of military psychiatrists. There he also developed the idea of ​​the hospital as a therapeutic community. Karl Menninger, who visited him during this time, later put this idea into practice in the USA and helped it spread widely. "

- Sandner, 2008, p. 157

Group analysis

As part of his work as a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps at the Northfield Military Hospital, he developed - influenced by Trigant Burrow - his special method of psychoanalytic group psychotherapy , group analysis . In his approach to group analysis, Foulkes combined psychoanalytic models and sociological concepts of human groups. He trained countless psychiatrists to become group therapists and influenced, also through a large number of publications, the group therapeutic developments of his time. Group analysis is the first broad and systematic approach to group therapy based on psychoanalysis. In 1952 he founded the Group Analytic Society (GAS) in London and in 1971 the Institute of Group Analysis (IGA), also in London, the first official group analytical training institute. The basic idea behind Foulke's understanding of psychoanalytic group therapy is that the group and not the group therapist is the healing and corrective agent. The group analyst's primary task is to remove the disturbances in the group process, i.e. to support the group in its ability to work. In contrast to classical psychoanalysis, Foulkes emphasizes in his understanding of pathological psychological developments less the individual and his inherent, also biologically shaped behavioral willingness, but rather the entire social context, called in his language "matrix". The individual is part of his family matrix, his direct social environment as another matrix, as well as his working world and his cultural matrix. Foulkes understands each individual mental illness as an expression of a disturbed interplay of forces of all these nested different social matrices. Precisely for this reason he sees the group - as a kind of social microcosm - as the most effective and appropriate instrument for healing and spiritual growth.

Foulkes suffered a fatal heart attack during a group analytical session at the age of 78. By this time he had published his way of thinking and working in four books and more than 50 essays.

Fonts

• On the statistics of tuberculosis in childhood. 1924 (Frankfurt am Main, university dissertation, 1923).
• Introduction to group-analytic psychotherapy. Studies in the social integration of individuals and groups. Heinemann, London 1948.
• with Elwyn J. Anthony: Group psychotherapy. The psycho-analytic approach. Penguin, Harmondsworth et al. 1957.
• Therapeutic group analysis. George Allen & Unwin, London 1964, (In German: Group analytical psychotherapy. The founder of group therapy on the development stages of his method in theory and practice. Kindler, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-463-18130-4 ).
• as editor with G. Stewart Prince: Psychiatry in a changing society. Tavistock, London et al. 1969, ISBN 0-422-71930-7 .
• Group-analytic psychotherapy. Method and principles. Gordon and Breach, London 1975, ISBN 0-677-05120-4 (In German: Practice of group analytical psychotherapy. (= Psychology and Person. 22). E. Reinhardt, Munich et al. 1978, ISBN 3-497-00861-3 ).
• Dynamic processes in the group analytical situation. In: Group Psychotherapy and Group Dynamics . Vol. 4, 1970, pp. 70-81.
• Selected papers. Psychoanalysis and group analysis. Karnac Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-946439-56-7 .

literature

• Tom Harrison: Bion, Rickman, Foulkes and the Northfield Experiments. Advancing on a Different Front (= Therapeutic Communities. 5). Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London et al. 2000, ISBN 1-85302-837-1 .
• Rolf Haubl , Franziska Lamott (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gruppeanalyse. Quintessenz-Verlag, Berlin et al. 1994, ISBN 3-86128-227-5 .
• Michael Hayne , Dieter Kunzke (ed.): Modern group analysis . Theory, practice and special fields of application. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2004, ISBN 3-89806-312-7 .
• Dietlind Köhncke: On the 70th anniversary of Sigmund Heinrich Foulkes' emigration. In: Mohammad E. Ardjomandi (Ed.): “Struggle for recognition in and between groups” (= yearbook for group analysis and its applications. Vol. 9). Mattes, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-930978-65-2 , pp. 31-35.
• Erwin Lemche: The Gestalt theoretical aspect and its influence on the mode of intervention in SH Foulkes. In: Group Psychotherapy and Group Dynamics. Vol. 29, 1993, pp. 70-102, ( online (PDF; 230 kB) ).
• Alfred Pritz , Elisabeth Vykoukal (ed.): Group psychoanalysis. Theory - Technology - Application (= Library Psychotherapy. Vol. 10). Facultas, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-85076-496-6 .
• Dieter Sandner: Obituary for SH Foulkes (1998–1976). In: SH Foulkes: Practice of group analytical psychotherapy. 2nd, unchanged edition. Dietmar Klotz, Eschborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-88074-490-5 , pp. 156-158.

Web links

• Literature by and about SH Foulkes in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sandner: Obituary for SH Foulkes (1998–1976). In: SH Foulkes: Practice of group analytical psychotherapy. 2nd, unchanged edition. 2007, pp. 156-158.
2. ^ Köhncke: On the 70th anniversary of Sigmund Heinrich Foulkes' emigration. In: Ardjomandi (Ed.): “Struggle for recognition in and between groups”. 2003, pp. 31-35.
3. ↑ Lemche: The Gestalt theoretical aspect and its influence on the mode of intervention in SH Foulkes. In: Group Psychotherapy and Group Dynamics. Vol. 29, 1993, pp. 70-102, here p. 72.