SHAPING HISTORY: ALEXANDER MITSCHERLICH AND GERMAN PSYCHOANALYSIS AFTER 1945

Abstract

German post-war psychoanalysis was marked for many years by a strong narrative that assured its professional identity: psychoanalysis in Germany had been liquidated by National Socialism and had been rebuilt from scratch after 1945. The psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich was both an integral part of this narrative and its most important propagator. The author analyses the genesis of this narrative, its moral and political function and finally its demise. In doing so he gives a short account of the first years of the reconstruction of psychoanalytic life in Germany after 1945. He draws on new research on Alexander Mitscherlich to describe his relationship with organized psychoanalysis. He explains why the biography of Mitscherlich and the history of German post-war analysis became interrelated to the point where both provided an integral part of each other's self-understanding. Finally, he documents how the narrative was gradually deconstructed after the death of Mitscherlich in 1982.