Abraham Brill

Abraham Arden Brill ( born October 12, 1874 in Kańczuga (then Austria, now powiat Przeworski, Poland); † March 2, 1948 in New York City ) was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of Austrian origin. He was instrumental in the spread of classical psychoanalysis in the United States.

Youth and Education

In 1889, at the age of almost 15 years, Abraham Brill emigrated alone, without his family and without assets in the United States. He worked and earned money to acquire the high school graduation can. After that, he studied at New York University and then at Columbia University and graduated in 1904 as Doctor of Medicine with the MD from.

In the years 1902-1908 he visited Europe. In Zurich he met at the local university psychiatric clinic Eugen Bleuler, Karl Abraham, Carl Jung, and became familiarized especially by Jung with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, whom he visited in April 1908 in Vienna. Soon after, he returned to the United States and met again in 1909 Freud, Jung and Sándor Ferenczi in their visit to America at Clark University.

Influence on the spread of psychoanalysis

Brill was one of the earliest and most active exponents of psychoanalysis in the United States. Together with 15 other doctors, he founded in 1911 the " New York Psychoanalytic Society " and was from 1911 to 1913 and from 1925 to 1936 its president. In 1914 he also became a member of the founded by Ernest Jones, " American Psychoanalytic Association " and took over the presidency in the years 1919/1920, and from 1929 until 1935. His influence in this position, he also took to the membership of the two organizations on to restrict doctors. In contrast to Freud, who promoted the psychoanalysis by non-physicians and defended, Brill was convinced that the survival of psychoanalysis depended in the United States by maintaining the medical status.

He taught at New York University and Columbia University, was a practicing psychoanalyst, and wrote next to numerous essays and several works on basic principles and concepts of psychoanalysis. For early and wide dissemination of psychoanalysis in the United States he attended mainly by translating the first major works of Freud and also books by CG Jung into English.

The " Abraham A. Brill Library" of the New York Psychoanalytic Society, probably the greatest psychoanalytic library in the world, bears his name.

Works

• Psychoanalysis: Its Theories and Practical Application (1912 )
• Fundamental Conceptions of Psychoanalysis. ( 1921)