Viktor Emil von Gebsattel
Viktor Emil Klemens Franz Freiherr von Gebsattel or Victor Emil Freiherr von Gebsattel, also Victor-Emil von Gebsattel (4 February 1883 – 22 March 1976), was a human physician, psychiatrist, psychotherapist, scientific publicist, philosopher, and writer. He is considered a pioneer of anthropological medicine, psychotherapy and psychology and created the first German chair of medical psychology in Würzburg.
Life
Viktor Emil von Gebsattel came from the Franconian noble family Gebsattel and was the son of Konstantin von Gebsattel (1854-1932) and his wife Marie (née Freiin Karg von Bebenburg; 1860-1927). He attended the elementary school and the Neue Gymnasium in Bamberg, respectively, and subsequently the Humanist Gymnasium. In Berlin, he initially studied jurisprudence, but he soon changed the subject as well as the city: in Munich, he then studied philosophy, psychology and art history. He received his doctorate in 1906 with the dissertation "Zur Psychologie der Gefühlsirradiation" (Irradiation = radiation: an effect that occurs in the evaluation of objects of perception). His Doctoral advisor was the professor of philosophy Theodor Lipps.
Afterwards, Gebsattel was initially a writer and translator. Numerous trips, especially those to France, led to acquaintances with artists such as Henri Matisse, Auguste Rodin and Rainer Maria Rilke (with whom he later became close friends). He was permanently attached to the arts and also wrote poetry and prose himself.
In September 1911, Gebsattel participated in the III Congress of the "International Psychoanalytic Association," which was held in Weimar. Participants included C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. There, the baron also met the controversial as well as much admired 50-year-old writer and later psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé, who fascinated and captivated the young nobleman very much.
In 1913, Gebsattel decided to study medicine. From 1915 to 1920 he was an assistant physician at the Munich psychiatric clinic. There, under Emil Kraepelin, he completed his studies with a doctoral thesis on "Atypical forms of tuberculosis". After subsequent psychoanalytic training and further psychiatric-neurological training in Munich, he moved to Berlin, where he opened a private psychiatric sanatorium in 1926.
Deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, Gebsattel always found himself in tension between the principles of Catholic morality and the insights of psychoanalysis. During the era of the National Socialists, he felt close to the Kreisau Circle.
After World War II, Gebsattel worked for a short time in a private practice in Überlingen, then as head physician of the private psychiatric clinic "Schloss Hausbaden" near Badenweiler. At the University of Freiburg, he received a lectureship in medical psychology and psychotherapy in 1947. In 1950, at the age of 67, he was appointed honorary professor with a teaching assignment for medical psychology and psychotherapy at the Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg, and took over the provisional substitution of the full professorship for psychiatry and neurology. Likewise, he lectured on medical psychology.
In 1952, he had provisionally taken over the direction of the Institute of Anthropology and Hereditary Biology, where he gave the course Anthropology and Human Heredity in the winter semester 1952/1953. At the end of 1953, he received a psychotherapist as a staff member. The founding of the Würzburg Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology, the oldest institution of its kind in the German-speaking world, can be traced back to von Gebsattel's initiative. The original Chair of Heredity and Race Research was thus renamed the Chair of Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy in 1965, based on Gebsattel's activities; it was filled by Dieter Wyss in 1968.
Until 1969, Gebsattel was a member of the board of the Institute for Psychotherapy and Medical Psychology. Together with Gustav Kafka, he edited the "Jahrbuch für Psychologie und Psychotherapie" (Yearbook for Psychology and Psychotherapy) from 1952, as he was involved in several pioneering journals as author and editor in general. He has written countless essays and several books.
Works
- "Zur Psychologie der Gefühlsirradiation". In: Archiv für Psychologie 10 (1907)
- Beitrag zum Verständnis atypischer Tuberkuloseformen. In: Ludolph Brauer (ed.): Beiträge zur Klinik der Tuberkulose (1920)
- In seelischer Not. Brief eines Arztes (1940)
- Von der christlichen Gelassenheit. Brief eines Arztes (1940)
- "Sigmund Freud und die Seelenheilkunde der Gegenwart". In: Medizinische Klinik 41 (1946)
- Christentum und Humanismus. Wege des menschlichen Selbstverständnisses (1947)
- "Geschlechtsleib und Geschlechtstrieb. Bemerkungen zu einer Anthropologie des Geschlechtslebens". In: Psyche 6 (1953)
- Prolegomena einer medizinischen Anthropologie. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (1954)
- Das Menschenbild der Seelenheilkunde. Drei Vorlesungen zur Kritik des dynamischen Psychologismus (1957)
- ""Gedanken zu einer anthropologischen Psychotherapie"". In: V. E. Frankl, V. E. v. Gebsattel, J. H. Schultz (eds.): Handbuch der Neurosenlehre und Psychotherapie 3 (1959)
- Imago Hominis. Beiträge zu einer personalen Anthropologie (1964)
