Henri Frédéric Ellenberger (Nalolo,
Barotseland
Barotseland ( Lozi: Mubuso Bulozi) is a region between Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe including half of eastern and northern provinces of Zambia and the whole of Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province. It is the homeland of the ...
,
Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...
, 6 November 1905 –
Quebec
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...
, 1 May 1993) was a Canadian psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding
historiographer
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians hav ...
of
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial psych ...
.
Ellenberger is chiefly remembered for ''
The Discovery of the Unconscious'', an encyclopedic study of the history of dynamic psychiatry published in 1970.
Life
Henri F. Ellenberger was born in
British Rhodesia to
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
parents, and spent his childhood in the British colony of
Rhodesia
Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...
. He was later naturalised as a French citizen, and took his baccalaureate degree in Strasbourg, France, in 1924.
He studied medicine and psychiatry in Paris. A student of Professor
Henri Baruk
Henri Baruk (August 15, 1897 in Saint-Avé, Morbihan – June 14, 1999 in Saint-Maurice, Val-de-Marne) was a French neuropsychiatrist of Jewish descent, internationally renowned, an apostle of Moral treatment, whose studies inspired by the B ...
, he obtained his doctorate in 1934, while working at the famous Hôpital Sainte-Anne alongside such well-known contemporaries as
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
(whose flair for self-publicity he early noted).
Subsequent to the emergence of the
Vichy government
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its terr ...
, Ellenberger emigrated to Switzerland in 1941. There he went through a training analysis with
Oskar Pfister
Oskar Pfister (23 February 1873 – 6 August 1956) was a Swiss Lutheran minister and lay psychoanalyst who was a native of Wiedikon.
Pfister studied theology, philosophy and psychology at the University of Zurich and the University of Basel, grad ...
between 1949 and 1952, before becoming a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society (SSP).
In 1953, in a major career change, Ellenberger became the lecturer at the
Menninger Clinic
The Menninger Foundation was founded in 1919 by the Menninger family in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Foundation, known locally as Menninger's, consists of a clinic, a sanatorium, and a school of psychiatry, all of which bear the Menninger name. ...
in Topeka (Kansas). At the end of 1958, Ellenberger left Topeka. He obtained a research appointment in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal. Later (1962), he went on to become Professor of Criminology at the
Université de Montréal
The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-de ...
, in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. There he was to do pioneering work on
victimology
Victimology is the study of victimization, including the psychological effects on victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and c ...
, exploring the psychodynamics between offender and victim.
Publications and awards
Ellenberger is chiefly remembered for ''The Discovery of the Unconscious'', an encyclopedic study of the history of dynamic psychiatry published in 1970. This work traced the origins of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
and
psychotherapy
Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of psychological methods, particularly when based on regular personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase happiness, and overcome pro ...
back to its 18th-century prehistory in the attempts to heal disease through
exorcism
Exorcism () is the religious or spiritual practice of evicting demons, jinns, or other malevolent spiritual entities from a person, or an area, that is believed to be possessed. Depending on the spiritual beliefs of the exorcist, this may be ...
, as practiced by the Catholic priest
Johann Joseph Gassner
Johann Joseph Gassner (22 August 1727 in Braz, near Bludenz, Vorarlberg – 1779 Pondorf, now part of Winklarn, Bavaria) was a noted exorcist.
While a Catholic priest at Klösterle he gained a wide celebrity by professing to "cast out devils" a ...
, and from him through the researchers of
hypnotism,
Franz Mesmer
Franz Anton Mesmer (; ; 23 May 1734 – 5 March 1815) was a German physician with an interest in astronomy. He theorised the existence of a natural energy transference occurring between all animated and inanimate objects; this he called " ani ...
and the
Marquis de Puységur
A marquess (; french: marquis ), es, marqués, pt, marquês. is a nobleman of high hereditary rank in various European peerages and in those of some of their former colonies. The German language equivalent is Markgraf (margrave). A woman w ...
, to the 19th century neurologist
Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot (; 29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurology, neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes. Charcot ...
and the main figures of 20th century psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
,
Alfred Adler
Alfred Adler ( , ; 7 February 1870 – 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, family constellation and birth order ...
and
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
.
Robin Skynner
Robin Skynner (16 August 1922 in Cornwall–24 September 2000 in Islington, London) was a psychiatric pioneer and innovator in treating mental illness.
As a young man during World War II, Skynner was a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot who flew the ...
praised the clarity of its presentation of the ideas of the great twentieth-century figures in their socio-historical contexts. Ellenberger's account of
Pierre Janet
Pierre Marie Félix Janet (; 30 May 1859 – 24 February 1947) was a pioneering French psychologist, physician, philosopher, and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic memory.
He is ranked alongside William James and ...
has also been singled out for special mention; while
Anthony Stevens
Anthony Stevens (born 2 July 1971) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the North Melbourne Kangaroos. He was named as ruck rover in the club's official 'Team of the Century'.
Stevens was a member of North Melbourne premiersh ...
has made use of his concept of "creative illness" in his account of Jung.
Gay also singled out for mention Ellenberger's 1972 article on
Anna O
Bertha Pappenheim (27 February 1859 – 28 May 1936) was an Austrian-Jewish feminist, a social pioneer, and the founder of the Jewish Women's Association (''). Under the pseudonym Anna O., she was also one of Josef Breuer's best-documented pat ...
, which Gay considered "persuasively corrects Jones's misreading and Freud's misremembering of the case". It was however only one of the thirty-five or so historical articles Ellenberger published both before and after his great synopsis.
The Resource Center Henri Ellenberger in Paris was named in his honor. During his lifetime he received many awards, including the Gold Medal of the Beccaria Prize in 1970, and the Jason A. Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada.
Characterisation
Ellenberger has been characterised as one of the mid-century, interdisciplinary independents in psychiatric thought. His unique career path and independent, if moderate, Freudian revisionism, made him at times an isolated figure, especially with the biological turn in psychiatry at the close of the twentieth century. His own belief in the central importance of the reality of the unconscious never faltered, however, even with the fading of his dream of a synthesis that "would do justice to the rigorous demands of experimental psychology and to the psychic realities experienced by the explorers of the unconscious".
From 1956 to 1959, Ellenberger started teaching the history of psychiatry at the Menninger Foundation (where George Devereux already gave a lecture on psychoanalysis and anthropology). The experience of exile played a key role in explaining the Ellenberger's interest in history.
Criticism
Ellenberger has been criticised for modelling his picture of the origins of psychiatry in the Enlightenment clash with
Demonology
Demonology is the study of demons within religious belief and myth. Depending on context, it can refer to studies within theology, religious doctrine, or pseudoscience. In many faiths, it concerns the study of a hierarchy of demons. Demons may b ...
— in the triumph of illuminated reason over the blindness of faith.
[Micale, p. 227]
Works
* ''
The Discovery of the Unconscious'': The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books. Hardcover edition: 1970, . Paperback edition: 1981, .
* ''Beyond the Unconscious: Essays of Henri F. Ellenberger in the History of Psychiatry'' (Princeton 1993) ed. Mark S. Micale
* ''Doctors of the Soul'' (1995), ed.
Elisabeth Roudinesco
* Rollo May, Ernest Angel, and Henri F. Ellenberger eds., ''Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology'' (1958)
* Henri Ellenberger, "Dynamic Psychiatry: An Introduction. Lecture at the Menninger School of Psychiatry on August 22, 1956, Topeka, Kansas", ed. Emmanuel Delille, Zinbun (Kyoto University 2016), 47, p. 125-128.
See also
References
External links
Dr Henri F. Ellenberger, La vie et l'oeuvre de Pierre Janet.Un voyage d’observation des psychothérapies aux États-Unis : Henri Ellenberger entre psychiatrie transculturelle et héritage janétien (1952).par E. Dellile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellenberger, Henri
1905 births
1993 deaths
Swiss psychiatrists
Canadian psychoanalysts
Université de Montréal faculty
20th-century Canadian physicians
Rhodesian emigrants to France
French emigrants to Canada