Thea Schönfelder

Thea Louise Schönfelder (born February 16, 1925 in Hamburg ; † July 25, 2010 there ) was a German psychiatrist and university professor . She was the first woman in Germany to be appointed to a chair for child and adolescent psychiatry , worked as the medical director of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and is considered a pioneer of family therapy and constellation work .

Life

Thea Schönfelder grew up in Hamburg as the daughter of the President of the Hamburg Parliament, Adolph Schönfelder , one of the fathers of the Basic Law. She joined the SPD in 1946 . After studying medicine, obtaining a license to practice medicine and doing a doctorate ( on the question of thalamus syndrome in brain tumors) , she completed her training as a specialist in nervous and mental disorders as well as in child and adolescent psychiatry in 1957 . From 1958 she worked at the UKE, and in 1966 she completed her habilitation there with a thesis on perpetrator-victim relationships in child sexual offenses. In 1970 she was appointed to the chair, which she held until 1987.

Schönfelder was also valued for her commitment and the moral courage with which she was able to de-escalate in some critical situations. Thanks to their efforts, on the one hand, the establishment of a youth department and, on the other hand, the structural adaptation of the child and youth psychiatry at the UKE. Her clinical focus was - innovative at the time - family therapy and concentrative exercise therapy (KBT). She valued this form of therapy because of the chance of reaching completely frozen and silent adolescents - with symbol-related work. Thea Schönfelder has published comparatively little for one chair holder: “I think I have set different priorities, especially through working with KBT. Dealing with patients - or rather clients - was always more important to me than sitting down and writing or doing research. ”She passed on her clinical experience in teaching, within the clinic and as a supervisor outside of it.

Schönfelder took over the playful use of form and posture from Virginia Satir , who integrated sculpture work into family therapy . As an example, she cited the sentence “I am attached to you”, which she made realistic. It quickly became clear to those involved that such a relationship had become a burden for both of them. In Schönfelder's " family sculpture ", a person affected positions the other participants in the way they believe they are to one another. Everyone stays in the given posture for a short time and is asked how he or she has fared in their position. The query of personal perception is done in the same way as it later became customary in family constellations and structural constellations. Then those involved can spontaneously choose a better position and are asked again. Ultimately, all family members learn more about themselves and the other members of the "system" to which they belong.

"Without the intensive preoccupation with empathizing with spaces, with the atmosphere, I would not have worked the way I did."

- Thea Schönfelder : EPPENDORFER, newspaper for psychiatry, issue 6/2005

Gravestone of the burial place in the women's garden

When Schönfelder began her KBT training, she was already a professor and 48. This form appeared to be particularly valuable for individual work with psychotic young people: “Because you might not be able to establish contact other than through touch, through symbolic references.” In the case For example, when a decision was necessary that had previously not been made cognitively, she gave the young person concerned several stones to choose from, one for the position I can't! and one for the alternative I don't want! By naming the feelings and relating them to one another, the reasons for choosing one and the other position become visible and tangible. A stone is colder and heavier. The other is easy to hold. Focusing on perception quickly opens up a solution and a decision. If the family context was important, but most of the people concerned were not present, Schönfeld chose wooden figures for scenic representation. She thus became - together with Kurt Ludewig - the inventor of the family board .

Schönfelder also prepared psychiatric reports for former concentration camp inmates on their requests for compensation .

Today Thea Schönfelder is honored by the systemic structural constellations Matthias Varga von Kibéd and Insa Sparrer as an important ancestor of today's constellation work. Bert Hellinger got to know family constellation from her. On the occasion of her 80th birthday, an academic ceremony with former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the youth psychiatrist Reinhart Lempp took place at her former place of work. The honoree herself spoke about youth in old age .

Thea Schönfelder was buried in the women's garden at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg. Her daughter lives with her family in Sicily and works there as a psychotherapist.

Fonts

• The role of the girl in sex offenses. Enke, Stuttgart 1968.
• The therapeutic possibilities of concentrative movement therapy (1982). In: Helmuth Stolze (Ed.) The Concentrative Movement Therapy , Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2002 (3rd edition) ISBN 978-3-540-42901-2
• Body experience as the basis of psychotherapeutic processes , 1996.
• About the "KBT tree" , 1989.
• On the question of the thalamic syndrome in brain tumors. Hamburg 1951.

Web links

• Website of the Garden of Women Association Hamburg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Who is who? . 29th edition (1990). P. 1220.
2. ↑ Obituary notice
3. ^ ^{A b} Christian Pross: reparation: the guerrilla war against the victims . Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum 1988 ISBN 3-610-08502-9 , pp. 249-257
4. ↑ Press release of the UKE: Former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at the ceremony for Prof. Dr. Thea Schönfelder at the UKE ( Memento of the original dated June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Arnd Krüger : History of movement therapy, in: Preventive medicine . Springer, Heidelberg Loseblatt Collection 1999, 07.06, pp. 1–22.
6. ↑ ^{a b} EPPENDORFER, newspaper for psychiatry, issue 6/2005 ( Memento from March 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
7. ^ Institute for Systemic Structure Constellation: Roots and Sources
8. ^ Bert Hellinger: The family constellation from the beginning until now