Frieda Fromm-Reichmann

Frieda Fromm- Reichmann ( born October 23, 1889 in Karlsruhe, † April 28, 1957 in Rockville, Maryland, United States) was a German - American physician and psychoanalyst. It is considered a pioneer of analytic oriented psychotherapy of psychoses and representative of Neopsychoanalyse.

Life

Frieda Fromm- Reichmann was born as the eldest daughter of a Jewish banking family. Since her parents, Alfred and Klara Reichmann, no sons, they had allowed their elders more than others were Orthodox Jewish women at that time. Her father encouraged her to study medicine. Frieda wrote in 1908 at the Medical Faculty of Königsberg, where they 1911 the state examination and the degree of Dr. med existed. In 1914 she received her license to practice medicine. During the First World War, she treated as assistant to the neurologist and psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Königsberg brain injured German soldiers.

From 1918 to 1920 she worked in Frankfurt am Main, to 1923 in the private sanatorium Weisser Hirsch in Dresden and then to Berlin. She trained as a psychoanalyst and opened a private sanatorium, where she treated psychotic patients in Heidelberg. In 1926 she married the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm founded in 1929 and with him the Frankfurt Institute for Psychoanalysis. In 1930 it belonged to Franz Alexander, Otto Fenichel, Erich Fromm, Georg GRODDECK, Karen Horney, Melanie Klein, Sándor Radó, Hanns Sachs and René A. Spitz to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society. In 1931 it came to the separation of Erich Fromm.

1933 emigrated Frieda Fromm- Reichmann via Strasbourg and Palestine to the U.S., where she worked as a psychotherapist in the directed by Dexter M. Bullard Psychiatric Hospital Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. There she met Harry Stack Sullivan know, whose interpersonal theory was strongly influenced. In 1943 she founded with Harry Stack Sullivan, Erich Fromm, Clara Thompson and Janet Rioch the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. She taught at the Washington School of Psychiatry and worked as Director of Psychotherapy at Chestnut Lodge until her death.

Her most famous patient was the later writer Joanne Greenberg, who under the pseudonym Hannah Green autobiographical book I told you never promised a rose garden of their disease and the therapeutic healing process wrote with Frieda Fromm- Reichmann. The book was made ​​into a film in 1977 and under the same name was created in 2004 a play. Fromm- Reichmann's student Hilde Bruch achieved a worldwide reputation as a specialist in eating disorders.

Work

Frieda Fromm- Reichmann is considered a pioneer in the treatment of schizophrenia and is one of the most influential figures of the Neopsychoanalyse. Under the influence of the theories of Sullivan, Fromm and Horney and her own therapy experiences they went away in the 1930s by Freud's view that psychosis for psychoanalysis were not surmountable, as well as genetic and incurable from the views of traditional psychiatry, for schizophrenia had. She approached so Alfred Adler's individual psychology, therefore, looked at the man and his psyche as an indivisible whole, and as a treat. Your idea of ​​the schizophrenogenic mother points out that Fromm- Reichmann did not explain the cause of psychosis with the biological heredity, but with psychosocial factors in the family environment, in particular the early mother -child relationship.

She has written numerous works for Neurology and Psychotherapy: In her essay about the loneliness she pointed to the importance of solitude for the development of mental disorders and mental illnesses. This loneliness she asked the doctor -patient relationship as a healing interpersonal encounter opposite: the therapist the patient should build a bridge over which he can go from great loneliness of his own world to reality and human warmth. As part of its research on the development and therapy of schizophrenia, they also dealt with manic-depressive psychosis. While she suspected the interference to schizophrenics in infancy, when the infant could not distinguish between itself and the mother, she pinpointed the origin of the difficulties of the manic-depressive in connection with mothers who experience the growing independence of the child as a threat.

Fromm- Reichmann dealt in detail with the psychotherapeutic process and the personality of the therapist. In 1950, she described the development of their form of therapy Intensive therapy in the work Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy. She was of the view that a therapy can only succeed if the therapist believes in the possibility of psychic change in themselves and in others. Psychotherapy must - according to Fromm- Reichmann - the people in order to enable him to self-realization, convey universal values ​​such as growth, love and ability to work etc.. The goal of therapy with schizophrenics was to explore the dynamics of fear, which plays a central role in schizophrenia Fromm - Reichmann.

" The therapist should know that his role is over, if these people are capable of self - to find their own sources of satisfaction and security, regardless of the consent of their neighbors, their family and public opinion - without injury of their fellow men. Such an attitude is necessary because not is usually the cure of a schizophrenic in the conversion of existing even before the disease personality in a different kind of personality. In this sense, schizophrenia is not a disease but a specific personality status with their own ways of life. I am convinced that many schizophrenics could be healthy if the goal of treatment in terms of the needs of the schizoid personality (...) would be understood, and (...) not in the sense of non-schizophrenic, conformist "good citizen " of the psychiatrist. "

Thus, they sought to empower the patient to integrate the psychosis in his life, as Joanne Greenberg has described impressively in her book. This is particularly clear in the dialogue between patient and therapist, even if they are present in a novel-like implementation. It is particularly visible

• The non-directive approach
• The individual psychological approach
• The orientation on the causal finality.

They can be seen as typical of an embossed Adler and his successors such as Rudolf Dreikurs therapy and its integration into the Neopsychoanalyse.

Selected writings

• Dexter M. Bullard ( ed.) Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. University of Chicago Press, 1959.
• With Kate Hill: Intensive psychotherapy. Hippocrates -Verlag, 1959.
• Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy. University of Chicago Press, 1960, ISBN 0-226-26599-4.
• Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. A selection from the writings. Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 978-3-12-902770-7.