Rudolf Dreikurs

Rudolf Dreikurs ( born February 8, 1897 in Vienna, † May 25, 1972 in Chicago) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, educator and psychologist and representatives of individual psychology.

Life

Rudolf Dreikurs studied medicine in Vienna. The Viennese Art Nouveau movement aroused in him the sense of social responsibility and an interest in the youth. As a student, he organized socialist medical students and was a university representatives in the Vienna Workers. There he met the then Deputy Chairman of the Workers' Council of the first district, Alfred Adler, know. Dreikurs was impressed with how Adler made ​​the experience of psychiatry and psychotherapy for the education useful and how he included the social question in his teaching. After his studies and doctorate devoted Dreikurs issues of social and mental hygiene and began around 1930 intensively on individual psychological projects under the medical working group to cooperate. He gave lectures, led by courses and published a number of articles. In 1932 he published his first book, The nervous symptom. The book Introduction to Individual Psychology took place in 1933 because of National Socialism no more widespread and was only in 1969 under the title Principles of Individual Psychology reappear.

Concerned about the political development in Austria Dreikurs in 1937 emigrated to Brazil in the United States. There he was editor of the Individual Psychology of Individual Psychology News and Bulletin and founder of the American Journal of Individual Psychology. From 1942 he was professor of psychiatry in Chicago. He founded the Alfred Adler Institute in Chicago has university status today. Three students sat in the U.S., the Viennese tradition of joining prophylaxis of neuroses and teacher training continued, found access to doctors, psychiatrists and teachers and founded child and parental counseling. He was known for his numerous books readily understandable especially for teacher training far beyond the United States. On the basis of individual psychology he developed his own psychotherapeutic school that Teleoanalyse. From 1962, he conducted regular international holiday courses ( ICASSI ) for individual psychology, interested teachers, doctors, psychologists and other professionals.

Work

Three students wrote more than 170 scientific and understandable books and articles.

"To understand children, to influence them and improve their error, requires insight into the development of the personality, because of growing our views of human nature, and especially of our ideas about how children and become what they are, is our behavior towards them be determined. The desire to be part of a group, each person is based on nature, can. Because he is a social being and can function as such fully only within a group. As long as he feels he belongs, he can use his energies for the demands of the given situation, with the level and extent of belonging of the development of his sense of community depend on how Adler called it. Man is thus born with the ability to act as a social being, and to develop the necessary sense of community. Fully developed this includes not only awareness, to have a place, but also the ability and willingness to play a constructive role in life. It is the basis for what we may call "normality", the basis for cooperation and fulfillment. Terrible developed sense of community restricts the social function.

(...) From his experiences with the internal and external environment, the child draws conclusions about how it can best live together with others. His general attitude to life is his lifestyle or life plan. He is the key to the personality of each individual, and includes the unity of his individuality. All acts and each posture are just pages of this general lifestyle that is based on the evaluating attitude and inner views of the child of himself and his abilities. " (Rudolf Dreikurs Psychology in the Classroom 1957 / Psychology in the Classroom, 1973)

A wider public Dreikurs was known for his parenting books that he has written in part with its employees. "Children are challenging us: how we educate them up to date", " children learn from the consequences " or " discipline without tears " are works that are dedicated to education in the family. These works are widespread, have in recent times but also experienced criticism.