Therese Benedek

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Therese Benedek (born November 8, 1892 in Eger , Austria-Hungary ; died October 27, 1977 in Chicago ) was a Hungarian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst .

Life

Therese Friedmann was the third of four children of the businessman Ignatzius Friedmann (* 1852) and Charlotte, geb. Link (1856-1926). The family moved to Budapest in 1900 , where Therese attended the Lyceum. From 1911 she studied medicine at the Budapest University and graduated in 1916. She began her assistantship in Budapest in pediatrics , then in Pozsony , after the declaration of independence in Czechoslovakia , she returned to Budapest as a Hungarian, where she married the dermatologist Tibor Benedek (1892–1974) in 1919.

Benedek had already shown her interest in psychoanalysis while studying medicine by studying literature and attending lectures by Sandor Ferenczi . During this time she had a training analysis with Ferenczi or Franz Alexander , which she did not explain herself. After the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic , she emigrated to Germany in 1920 together with other members of the Hungarian Psychoanalytic Association , where she joined the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute for organizational purposes. The two Benedeks moved to Leipzig , where they initially had assistant positions and then opened a medical practice, she as a psychoanalyst, and thus the first in Leipzig. In 1926 they had their son Thomas, in 1929 their daughter Judith, and the children were looked after by a governess. Her “Leipzig Psychoanalytical Working Group of the German Psychoanalytic Society” was recognized in 1927, and Benedek was a training analyst for Gerhart Scheunert between 1928 and 1931 , whom she contacted again after the war.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , the Benedeks emigrated to Chicago in 1936, where he began as a dermatologist at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago and she took over the vacant position of Karen Horney at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis with Franz Alexander and there until 1970 worked as an analyst and training analyst. She also opened a private practice and taught at the Erikson Institute . In 1942 she received US citizenship. One of her sisters was a victim of the Holocaust in Hungary .

In Chicago, in collaboration with the endocrinologist Boris B. Rubinstein , she created a research paper on the psychoendocrinology of the menstrual cycle , which was published in 1939 as a pioneering work, also in methodological terms. Benedek wrote a large number of scientific articles on the psychosexual functions of women, which according to the judgment of the psychiatrist Uwe Henrik Peters “do not depart from what was generally accepted at the time of their writing”.

Fonts (selection)

  • Dominant ideas and their relation to morbid cravings , London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1936.
  • The sexual cycle in women , Washington, DC: National Research Council, 1942.
  • Insight and personality adjustment , New York: Ronald, 1946.
  • The family , New York: Harper, 1949.
  • Franz Alexander, Therese Benedek: Psychoanalytic therapy , New York: Ronald Pr. Co., 1947.
  • The psychosomatic implications of the primary unit: mother-child , Chicago, Ill .: Inst. For Psychoanalysis, 1949.
  • The functions of the sexual apparatus and their disorders , Berlin 1951.
  • Joan Fleming; Therese F Benedek: Psychoanalytic supervision: a method of clinical teaching , New York: Grune and Stratton, 1966.
  • Franz Alexander, Therese Benedek: Psychosomatic Medicine; Basics and areas of application , Berlin / New York: W. de Gruyter, 1971.

literature

  • Thomas G. Benedek: A psychoanalytic career begins. Therese F. Benedek, MDA documentary biography , New York: International Universities Press, 1979.
  • Uwe Henrik Peters : Psychiatry in Exile. The emigration of dynamic psychiatry from Germany 1933–1939 , Düsseldorf: Kupka, 1992, ISBN 3-926567-04-X .
  • Hertha Richter-Appelt ; Gerhart Scheunert: Therese Benedek as a psychoanalyst and psychoendocrinologist. In: Adolf-Ernst Meyer, Ulrich Lamparter (Ed.): Pioneers of Psychosomatics. Contributions to the history of the development of holistic medicine , Heidelberg: Asanger, 1994, pp. 89–100.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 , Vol II, 1, Munich: Saur 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , P. 78.
  • Doris Weidemann: Life and Work of Therese Benedek 1892–1977. Female sexuality and the psychology of the feminine , Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1988, ISBN 3-631-40572-3 (also Cologne, Univ., Diss., 1988).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis see English Wikipedia : Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis
  2. ↑ Erikson Institute for Early Childhood Education see Wikipedia en: Erikson Institute
  3. ↑ Uwe Henrik Peters: Psychiatry in Exile , p. 349
personal data
SURNAME Benedek, Therese
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Eger
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1977
Place of death Chicago