S. H. Foulkes

SH Foulkes, actually Sigmund Heinrich Fuchs ( * 1898 in Karlsruhe, † 1976 in London ) was a German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who had to emigrate in 1933 because of his Jewish origin to Britain. In 1938 he took on British citizenship and in English similar names Foulkes.

Life

Fuchs was born in Karlsruhe. He studied medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg, Munich and Frankfurt am Main. He completed his psychiatric training at Otto stops su in Vienna and a neurological Kurt Goldstein, whose assistant he was for two years. So he got to know the Gestalt psychology, which turned out to be for his later group therapy approaches as very significant. Through his interest in psychological problems, he came to the works of Sigmund Freud in contact and eventually moved to Vienna, where he a training analysis with Helene German underwent. His control analyst was Hermann Nunberg ( Sandner 2008). In Vienna he took during his psychoanalytic training also to the Technical Seminar conducted by Wilhelm Reich in part. In 1930 he joined the psychoanalytic institute in Frankfurt am Main. Later he was for a short time director of the outpatient clinic of the Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute, which was housed in the same building as the Institute later became famous for Social Research. Here he came into contact with Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. He was also a close friend of the sociologist Norbert Elias. Working with him was on his later developed therapeutic concepts also have a great influence. From him he took over, among others, the principles of 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 at the invitation of Ernest Jones Geneva and Paris to London and settled down as a psychoanalyst in Exeter. In 1938 he took on British citizenship. In the fall of 1940, Foulkes received his call-up to the military. That same autumn he had the idea to have to gather his patients in the waiting room and free associate (D. Köhncke, 2003). He knew thereafter that he had discovered something new. "Today was a historic moment in psychiatry, but no one knows about it " ( Lemche, 1993, p 72).

"As an army psychiatrist, he led from 1942 in Northfileld, the then center for the training of military psychiatrists, in large scale group work on a psychoanalytic basis. There he developed the idea of the hospital as a therapeutic community. Karl Menninger, who visited him during this time, has subsequently implemented in the U.S. these thoughts into action and helped to widespread use. "

Foulkes suffered a fatal heart attack during a group analytic session at the age of 78 years. Up to this time he had published his thinking and way of working in four books and over 50 articles.

Group analysis

During his tenure as a Major of the " Royal Army Medical Corps " at the military hospital in Northfield, he developed - influenced by Trigant Burrow - his special method of psychoanalytic group psychotherapy, group analysis. In his approach, the group analysis Foulkes joined psychoanalytic models and sociological concepts of human groups. He made countless psychiatrists to group therapists and influenced, even on a large number of publications, the group therapeutic developments of his time. The group analysis is the first broad and systematic approach of a psychoanalytically -depth group therapy. In 1952 he founded the Group Analytic Society in London (GAS) and 1971, the Institute of Group Analysis (IGA ), also in London, the first official group analytic training institute. The basic idea of Foulkes understanding of psychoanalytic group therapy is that the group and not the group therapist represents the healing and corrective agent. The group analyst has to eliminate the interference task of the group process in the first place, that is to assist the group in their ability to work. In contrast to classical psychoanalysis Foulkes points out in his understanding of morbid mental developments less the individual and his has given him, and biologically characterized Willingness behavior, but rather the entire social context, named in his language "Matrix". The individual is part of his family matrix, its immediate social environment as a further matrix, as well as his work and its cultural matrix. Foulkes understands each individual mental illness as an expression of a disturbed interplay of forces of all these different social nested matrices. This is precisely why he sees the group - as a kind of social microcosm - the most effective and most appropriate instrument of healing and spiritual growth.

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