Hyman Spotnitz

Hyman Spotnitz ( born September 29, 1908 in Boston, Massachusetts, † 18 April 2008 ) was an American psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and psychiatry researcher who is considered the founder of analytic work with schizophrenics. In the 1950s he developed the so-called Modern psychoanalysis. He was also a pioneer of group psychotherapy.

Life stages

Born as the eldest of five children of an immigrant family in Boston, he grew up in the North End of Boston, attended public schools and graduated from Harvard College. In 1934, he completed his medical studies at the Friedrich- Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. He continued his medical training at Columbia University in New York and was continued in 1939 a Medical Science Degree in Neurology. His qualification in 1941 certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. A first work on schizophrenia, he was able to perform while he worked as a psychiatrist for the Jewish Board of Guardians in New York City. At this time, thought most psychoanalysts that schizophrenia would be untreatable and incurable. Also, group psychotherapy was not popular in the thirties. Spotnitz ' approach was considered controversial, so he left the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and developed his own theory.

Hyman Spotnitz married Miriam Berkman, whom he had known since childhood. His wife died in 1977, the couple had three sons.

Publications

• Measuring studies on Sehferne. Berlin, Med Diss 1934
• The Couch and The Circle: A Story of Group Psychotherapy, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961, ISBN 978-0-9703923-6-7
• Treatment of the Narcissistic Neuroses, together with Phyllis W. Meadow, Jason Aronson, 1976, 1995, ISBN 978-1-56821-416-0
• Psychotherapy of Preoedipal Conditions: Schizophrenia and Severe Character Disorders, Jason Aronson, 1976, 1995, ISBN 978-1-56821-633-1
• Just Say Everything: A Festschrift in Honor of Hyman Spotnitz, by Sara Sheftel, Assn for Modern Psychoanalysis, 1991, ISBN 978-0-9624534-0-3