Wilhelm Stekel

Wilhelm Stekel (born March 18, 1868 in Bojan , Bukowina , Austria-Hungary ; died June 25, 1940 in London ) was an Austrian doctor and psychoanalyst . He played an important role in the early history of psychoanalysis .

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Childhood and school days

Stekel was born the son of aspiring Jewish petty bourgeoisie. He had an older brother and a younger sister. Despite his poor circumstances, his parents made it possible for him to take music lessons, and he was a gifted violinist and pianist until the end of his life, who played house music with others. One of the anecdotes from his school days is that he was temporarily given a shoemaker's apprenticeship due to poor performance. He attended high school in Chernivtsi , the capital of Bukovina and an important economic and cultural center.

Education

After graduating from high school , he studied medicine in Vienna from 1887. After the third year of study he committed himself to training as a military doctor because of his poverty . After completing his basic studies with Theodor Meynert and Richard von Krafft-Ebing , he heard which the latter promoted his interest in sex research. Krafft-Ebing offered him a job in his clinic, which Stekel was unable to attend because of his military obligation. Krafft-Ebing was also linked to his pacifist commitment. He had met Bertha von Suttner and at times founded a pacifist student group in Vienna. On 10 June 1893 he received his doctorate from the University of Vienna as Doctor of General Medicine .

Private life

After he had managed to get rid of his military obligation, he married Malvine Nelken a year after his doctorate. From his marriage he had a son and a daughter. His son Erich-Paul Stekel (1898–1978) became a well-known composer and conductor who later emigrated to the United States. His daughter Gertrude (born 1895) married Fritz Zuckerkandl, the son of Berta and Emil Zuckerkandl , in 1919 .

Stekel married a second time. His wife Hilda Binder Stekel (1891–1969), b. Milko, he married on October 14, 1938, after having lived with her for a long time.

Professional career: Years in Vienna (1894–1938)

In 1894 Stekel opened a general practice in Vienna.

Stimulated by his brother, an editor, Stekel began a very intensive medical journalistic activity. He became a regular contributor to the Neue Wiener Tagblatt , but published in many other Austrian and German magazines. In 1895 he published the essay "On Coitus in Childhood", to which Freud later referred in his theory of infantile sexuality. Stekel might have met Sigmund Freud as early as 1891 at the Kassowitz Institute , where Freud was head of the neurological department. Around 1901 he was treated by Freud for erectile dysfunction, apparently in only a few sessions. He was so enthusiastic about his discoveries that he became the most important journalistic propagandist in psychoanalysis. "I was Freud's apostle and Freud was my Christ," he wrote in his unfinished and posthumously edited autobiography.

In 1902 he arranged for Freud to invite some interested doctors, including Alfred Adler , to speak to Freud's apartment. From this the Wednesday Society developed and, as a result, the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association and the International Psychoanalytic Association . In the Wednesday Society, Stekel was an active participant who had his own views and who disagreed with Freud in the "masturbation debates" and on the development of neurotic anxiety.

In 1906 he was co-founder and head of the short-lived "Vienna Representation of the Scientific and Humanitarian Committee in Berlin ".

In 1908 he published his first work, Anxiety States and Their Treatment . It came about in collaboration with Freud, who wrote a foreword that was omitted from the third edition (1921). His second book was Die Sprache des Traum (1911), which Freud criticized harshly, but referred to in later editions of his own "Interpretation of Dreams". When the International Psychoanalytical Association was founded (March 1910 congress in Nuremberg), the Viennese, led by Adler and Stekel, rebelled against Sigmund Freud, who wanted to make Carl Gustav Jung president for life. Freud had to give in, and Jung was elected for only two years. The decision to found local scientific associations was also implemented in Vienna. Adler became President and Stekel Vice President of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association, which was officially founded as an association on October 12, 1910. Together with Alfred Adler, Stekel also founded the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse in 1910 and worked as its editor. A little later Alfred Adler left the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association in disagreement with Freud. In the wake of an intrigue about the Zentralblatt, in which Freud felt he had been betrayed by Stekel, he also induced Stekel to resign. Although Stekel tried again and again to bring about a reconciliation with Freud, Freud wanted nothing more to do with him and refused an encounter for the last time when both were in exile in London.

During the entire First World War Wilhelm Stekel worked as a military doctor and psychiatrist. From April 4, 1914, Stekel was deployed to “Vereinsreservespital 6” in Vienna and treated, among other things, war neuroses . In November 1916, Stekel was transferred to the "kuk war hospital in Simmering", where he replaced Alfred Adler as head of the neuro-psychiatric section. As Stekel stated, he tried to protect his patients from the brutality of the war whenever possible.

After the end of the First World War, Stekel published his main work, the disturbances of the instinctual and affect life, in 10 volumes by 1928 . It was translated into English in a slightly different form, and some volumes into Dutch and French. This major work, as well as other of his numerous books and writings, found widespread circulation and was reissued into the 1970s (in the United States). Stekel developed a rich travel and lecturing activity that took him to the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western European countries. His attempts to start magazines were short-lived. Psyche and Eros appeared with his participation in New York from 1920, but he withdrew from it (together with Herbert Silberer ) in 1922. The Advances in Sexology and Psychoanalysis appeared in 1924, 1926, 1928, and 1931.

Stekel developed his own form of therapy, "active psychoanalysis", which is considered the first form of short psychotherapy in the specialist literature. In contrast to "classical psychoanalysis", which had devoted itself more and more to working through resistance and transference , which meant that the treatment process took longer, Stekel tried to deal with the patient's central unconscious conflicts more directly, also using suggestive and educational means and advice on life issues . His treatments are said to have lasted from a few weeks to a year and a half, but with several sessions a week (he refused to sit or lie down).

In 1931 he founded the quarterly publication Psychoanalytische Praxis - in addition to the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie , which was published in Germany by the General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (AÄGP) by its then chairman Ernst Kretschmer . After the National Socialists came to power, psychoanalytic practice was banned in Germany and continued in Vienna until 1937.

For the training of doctors - he was strictly against the training of “laypeople” to become psychoanalysts - he founded a number of associations over the years. The Organization of Medical Independent Analysts was founded in 1920 and later renamed the Association of Active Medical Analysts and the International Association of Medical Analysts . A number of local organizations were founded in several European and American cities, only one of which seems to exist in Hungary today.

Stekel was a friend of Helene Stöcker , who discussed his works in her magazine Die Neue Generation and also organized lectures by him. She described him as an "accomplished speaker and writer".

In his practice, which he resumed after the First World War, he treated, among others, the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Gross (1914) and the Scottish pedagogue Alexander Neill .

Stekel's works, like Sigmund Freud's, were subject to a total ban under National Socialism.

London exile and death (1938–1940)

Under the pressure of the political situation, on the day of the Anschluss of Austria , on March 11, 1938, he fled via Switzerland to England and had a private psychoanalytic practice in London. By escaping, he lost all of his fortune. He wrote his memoirs, which were published posthumously, and took part in cultural activities of the Austrian refugees.

Stekel committed suicide at the Pembroke Hotel in London because of a serious illness at the age of 72. "Self-inflicted aspirin poisoning" was given as the cause of death.

Work and effect

Wilhelm Stekel's early disagreements with Sigmund Freud are detailed in the biography of Francis Clark-Lowes. They arose from Freud's concept of the emergence of neurotic fear, which in the so-called actual neuroses would arise directly as an organic reaction from harmful sexual practices such as coitus interruptus, abstinence or excessive masturbation. Stekel contradicted the view of the harmfulness of masturbation and said that only feelings of guilt and conflicts could lead to fears.Other discussions can be understood from the fact that Stekel rejected the metapsychological constructions of Freud and his thinking remained with a phenomenological-practical attitude, which was Freud's ideas of Scientific approach did not correspond. On the other hand, Freud recognized Stekel's special talent for grasping dream meanings and recognizing complex neurotic conflict dynamics. In correspondence with Jung, he referred to Stekel as the “truffle pig”, which makes the most beautiful psychoanalytic discoveries. After the break with Freud, Stekel's works were hardly read or cited in the leading specialist organs of psychoanalysis. There it was gradually forgotten which thoughts and concepts he had introduced first. He was the first to use the term death instinct. His book Nervous Anxiety States first speaks of the “organ language of the psychic” and is therefore to be regarded as a basic work of psychosomatics . He claimed that hate was psychologically older than love, which Freud later reluctantly accepted. Stekel was one of the earliest psychoanalytic literary interpreters . He conducted empirical research by asking poets about their dreams.

Stekel's works were very common. His popular educational pamphlet Letters to a Mother has been translated into 25 languages. Many doctors and psychotherapists learned about psychoanalysis from him earlier than from the works of Freud. His main works are special in the psychoanalytic literature because they consist mainly of very detailed and often very long case studies. One can therefore view his work as a collection of cases on certain psychological phenomena (dream) and disorders. They are likely to have a significant cultural and historical significance that has not yet been noticed.

Stekel believed that sexology could only be psychoanalytic. He regarded the so-called perversions as neuroses, including homosexuality . He used the expression paraphilia, coined by Friedrich Salomon Krauss , for perversion and, analogously, parapathy for neurosis and paralogy for psychosis, and it goes back to Stekel that paraphilia was included in the American psychiatric nomenclature DSM-IV .

Stekel did not leave a closed theory of neuroses. His scientific work has not yet been explored insofar as there is an inner connection between his basic concepts and basic assumptions. They anticipate a number of ideas and concepts of later psychoanalysis history. Since the 1990s there has been a renewed interest in his work in the specialist literature.

Fonts

Stekel's oeuvre includes at least 500 books and writings, including novellas, plays and compositions. On the subject of psychotherapy , he was involved in the entire therapy lexicon . It is to the credit of his biographer Francis Clark-Lowes that Stekel's books and brochures have supplemented his articles for specialist organs, but also his journalistic work through his own research and arranged them chronologically.

Major works

• About coitus in childhood. A hygienic study. In: Viennese medical sheets. XVI, April 18, 1895, pp. 247-249.
• The causes of nervousness. New views on how they arise and how to prevent them. (= Hygienic time issues. II ). Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1907.
• Nervous anxiety and its treatment . Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1908.
• Poetry and Neurosis. Building blocks for the psychology of the artist and the work of art . JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1909.
• The language of dreams. A representation of the symbolism and interpretation of the dream in its relationship to the sick and healthy soul for doctors and psychologists . JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1911.
• The dreams of the poets. A comparative study of the unconscious driving forces in poets, neurotics, and criminals . JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1912.

• Disturbances of the instinct and affect life (the parapathic diseases). Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1912–1928.
  • Volume I: Nervous Anxiety and Treatment. 2nd Edition. 1912.
  • Volume II: Onanism and Homosexuality. The homosexual parapathy . 1923.
  • Volume III: The sexual coldness of women. A psychopathology of the female love life . 1920.
  • Volume IV: The Impotence of Men. The mental disorders of male sexual function . 1920.
  • Volume V: Psychosexual Infantilism. The emotional teething problems of adults . 1922.
  • Volume VI: Impulse Actions. Wandering instinct, dipsomania, kleptomania, pyromania, and related conditions . 1922.
  • Volume VII: Fetishism. Shown for doctors and criminologists . 1923.
  • Volume VIII: Sadism and Masochism. 1925.
  • Volume IX: Coercion and Doubt. Shown for doctors and medical professionals. First part . 1927.
  • Volume X: Coercion and Doubt. Shown for doctors and medical professionals. Part two . 1928.

• Progress and technique of dream interpretation . Weidmann, Vienna / Leipzig / Bern 1935.
• The technique of analytical psychotherapy. A summary based on thirty years of experience . Publisher Hans Huber, Bern 1938.
• The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel - The Life Story of a Pioneer Psychoanalyst . Ed: Emil Gutheil. Liveright, New York 1950.

Other fonts (selection)

• The cycle of love. Four new pictures from the sick bed of love . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna [approx. 1905].
• How do I prevent appendicitis? Hygienic time questions I . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1906.
• Uric acid and no end! The real and the fake gout . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1908.
• What is at the bottom of the soul. Confessions of a Psychiatrist . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1908.
• Chastity and health. Hygienic time issues IV . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1909.
• Nervous people. Small pen drawings from practice . Publisher Paul Knepler, Vienna 1911.
• Aesculapia as a harlequin. Humor, satire and imagination from practice . [Pseudonym Dr. med. Serenus] JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1912.
• I love that. Outline of a new diet of the soul. Published by Otto Salle, Berlin 1913.
• The nervous heart . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1913.
• "The people who call it - love ..." Four scenes from the sick bed of love . Publisher Paul Knepler, Vienna 1914.
• The will to sleep! Old and new about sleep and insomnia . JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1915.
• Our soul life in war. Psychological considerations of a neurologist. Published by Otto Salle, Berlin 1916.
• The nervous stomach. Hygienic time issues XI / XII . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1918.
• The telepathic dream. My experiences about the phenomena of clairvoyance while awake and in dreams . J. Baum Publishing House, 1918.
• The golden rope. A shadow play of love in four acts . Publisher Paul Knepler, Vienna 1919.
• The wise and the fool. A diary in verse . Paul Knepler Publishing House, 1919.
• The will to live. New and old ways to happiness . Published by Otto Salle, Berlin 1920.
• Masks of sexuality. The inner man . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna 1920.
• Masks of sexuality. The inner man . Paul Knepler Publishing House, Vienna [approx. 1923].
• Letters to a mother. Part 1: Infancy . Wendpunkt-Verlag, Zurich 1927.
• Letters to a mother. Part 2: Before and after the first years of school . Wendpunkt-Verlag, Zurich / Leipzig 1928
• Letters to a mother. Part 3: Puberty and Maturity Years . Wendpunkt-Verlag, Zurich 1929.
• Hearing - A sexual-physiological and psychological representation of the role and importance of the sense of hearing in the human instinct . [Edited by several authors], Verlag für Kulturforschung, Vienna / Leipzig 1930.
• The modern marriage . Wendpunkt-Verlag, Basel / Leipzig / Vienna 1931.
• The soul doctor. Mental Counseling Manual . Self-published by the Institute for Active Psychoanalysis, Leipzig / Amsterdam / Vienna 1933.
• Upbringing of parents . Weidmann & Co. Verlag der Psychotherapeutischen Praxis, Vienna / Leipzig / Bern 1934.
• Paths to the self. Psychological guidance in everyday life . Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1972.

literature

• Martin Brinkmann : Freud's apostle. Notes on the Viennese neurologist Wilhelm Stekel (1968–1940). In: Krachkultur . 14/2012, pp. 60-71.
• Francis Clark-Lowes: Freud, Stekel, and the Interpretation of Dreams: The Affinities with Existential Analysis. In: Psychoanalysis and History. Volume 3, Issue 1, Winter 2001, pp. 69-78, doi: 10.3366 / pah.2001.3.1.69 .
• Francis Clark-Lowes: Stekel, Wilhelm (1868-1940). In: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis . Thomson Gale, Detroit 2005.
• Francis Clark-Lowes: Freud's Apostle: Wilhelm Stekel and the Early History of Psychoanalysis. Authors OnLine, Bedfordshire 2010, ISBN 978-0-7552-1309-2 ( review by Bernd Nitzschke , literaturkritik.de , 11/2012).
• Jaap Bos: A silent antipode: The making and breaking of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel. In: History of Psychology. Vol. 6, No 4, 2003, pp. 331-336.
• Jaap Bos, Leendert Gronendijk: The art of imitation: Wilhelm Stekel's apprenticeship years. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Vol. 85, 2004, pp. 713-729.
• Jaap Bos, Leendert Gronendijk: The Self-Marginalization of Wilhelm Stekel. Freudian Circles Inside and Out. With a foreword by Zvi Lothane . Springer Science + Business Media, New York 2007.
• Rudolf Jerabek: Wilhelm Stekel. In: Oskar Frischenschlager (Ed.): Vienna, where else! The emergence of psychoanalysis and its schools . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-205-98135-9 .
• Philip Kuhn: "A pretty piece of treachery": the strange case of Dr Stekel and Sigmund Freud. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Vol. 79, 1998, pp. 1151-1171.
• Bernd Nitzschke : Wilhelm Stekel, a pioneer of psychoanalysis. Notes on selected aspects of his work. In: Ernst Federn , Gerhard Wittenberger (ed.): From the circle around Sigmund Freud. To the minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 176–191. ( revised version online )
• Bernd Nitzschke:  Stekel Wilhelm. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 13, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2007–2010, ISBN 978-3-7001-6963-5 , p. 203.
• Bernd Nitzschke:  Stekel, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , p. 235 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Josef Rattner : Wilhelm Stekel. In: J. Rattner (Ed.): The way to people . Europa-Verlag, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-203-50765-X , pp. 9–33.
• Josef Rattner: Wilhelm Stekel. In: Classics of Psychoanalysis. 2nd Edition. Beltz / Psychologie Verlag Union, Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-621-27285-2 , pp. 91–114 (first edition 1990 and T. Klassiker der Tiefenpsychologie ).
• Josef Rattner: Wilhelm Stekel and "active psychotherapy". In: Gestalten around Alfred Adler - pioneers of individual psychology. Eds. Alfred Lévy and Gerald Mackenthun. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2156-8 , pp. 289-309.
• Walter Schindler (Ed.): Active psychoanalysis, seen from an eclectic perspective. A reader. Compiled, commented, supplemented with own cases and edited. by Walter Schindler. Publisher Hans Huber, Bern 1980.
• Hans-Volker Werthmann: Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940). In: Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon of Sexual Research. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9 , pp. 665-672.
• Martin Stanton : Wilhelm Stekel: A Refugee Analyst and his English Reception , in: Edward Timms , Naomi Segal (Ed.): Freud in Exile: psychoanalysis and its vicissitudes . New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1988 ISBN 0-300-04226-4 , pp. 163-174

Web links

Wikiquote: Wilhelm Stekel  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Stekel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Wilhelm Stekel  in the German Digital Library
• Wilhelm Stekel , psyalpha

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Staff report (June 28, 1940). WILHELM STEKEL ONCE FREUD'S AIDE; Former Chief Assistant to the Psychoanalyst Wrote Works on Mental Maladies JOINED ADLER AND JUNG Among 'Disciples' Who Broke With 'Father' of Science - Theorized on Dictators. New York Times
2. ↑ Staff report (June 3, 1969). Dr. Hilda B. Stekel. New York Times
3. ^ Francis Clark-Lowes: Freud, Stekel and the Interpretation of Dreams: The Affinities with Existential Analysis. In: pep-web.org. 2001, accessed February 17, 2015 . 
4. ^ Hermann Nunberg, Ernst Federn: Protocols of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Association. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1976f.
5. ↑ Vienna Psychoanalytic Association. In: wpv.at. Retrieved February 17, 2015 . 
6. ↑ István Ormay: aktív analízis, aktív analitikus egyesület, pszichoanalízis, pszichoterápia, Ormay István. In: aktiv-analizis.hu. Retrieved February 17, 2015 (Hungarian). 
7. ↑ Stöcker: Memoirs. ed. by Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin u. Kerstin Wolff. Böhlau, Cologne 2015, p. 178 f.
8. ↑ Clark-Lowes Freud's Apostle , Chapter III 3.3.3.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Austrian State Archives, Archive of the Republic: Old Aid Fund Zl. 14,700. See also David Lester: Suicide and the Holocaust (2005), pp. 61–63 ( limited preview in Google Book Search), UP message “London June 27” in The New York Times and findagrave.com
10. ↑ Freud's Apostle , s. o. literature
11. ↑ Leendert Groenendijk: Masturbation and Neurasthenia: Freud and Stekel in Debate on the Harmful Effects of Autoerotism. In: J. Psychology & Human Sexuality. Vol. IX, (1), 1997, pp. 71-94.
12. ^ Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung: Correspondence. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1974, p. 446, 240 F March 14, 1911.
13. ^ W. Stekel: The language of the dream. 1911, p. 536.
14. ^ S. Freud: The disposition to obsessional neurosis . Ges. Werke XIII, p. 451: "Perhaps this is the meaning of a sentence by W. Stekel, which seemed incomprehensible to me at the time, that hate and not love is the primary emotional relationship between people."
15. ↑ The Dreams of the Poets. s. o. major works
16. ↑ In the entry Wilhelm Stekel of the English language Wikipedia it says: He is also credited with coining the term paraphilia, to replace “perversion”; also: the definition of paraphilia. In: dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved February 17, 2015 . 
17. ↑ Walter Marle (Ed.): Lexicon of the entire therapy with diagnostic information. 2 volumes, 4th revised edition. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1935 ( list of employees ).