Paul Ornstein
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Paul Hermann Ornstein ( hu, Ornstein Pál; April 4, 1924 – January 19, 2017) was a Hungarian-American psychoanalyst and
Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
survivor.


Early life

Ornstein was born in Hungary in a Jewish family to parents, Abraham Ornstein, an accountant, and Frieda Sziment. At 15, Ornstein left home to attend Franz Josef National Rabbinical Seminary in
Debrecen, Hungary Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and it ...
. On a visit home from seminary, he met his future wife Anna Brunn.


Interest in psychoanalysis

While he did attend a rabbinical seminary, he did not want to become a rabbi; rather, he wanted to study literature, archaeology, and philosophy. His interest in psychology evolved from reading novels, handwriting analysis, and poetry. At the seminary, he joined a study group that read ''
Interpretation of Dreams ''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (german: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what w ...
'' by
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 ...
as well as ''Thalassa'' by
Sándor Ferenczi Sándor Ferenczi (7 July 1873 – 22 May 1933) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst, a key theorist of the psychoanalytic school and a close associate of Sigmund Freud. Biography Born Sándor Fränkel to Baruch Fränkel and Rosa Eibenschütz, bo ...
and ''Ritual'' by Theodor Reik. Reik's book fostered Ornstein's interest in psychoanalysis especially because of his ability to connect it to his daily life as an observant Jew. Thus, at 15, he decided that he wanted to be a psychoanalyst.


The Holocaust

In March 1944, Germans invaded Hungary, and Ornstein was forced by the German Army to dig trenches as part of a forced labor battalion in
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on the eastern front of Poland and Ukraine. He was successful on his third attempt to escape from his battalion and reached Budapest, which was still occupied by Nazis at the time. During the siege of Budapest, he spent several months during 1944 hiding in the basement of the annex of the Swiss Embassy in Budapest. After the Soviet army took over Hungary, he returned to his home town in search of his family and Anna. However, Russian soldiers arrested him and forced him to work in a Soviet labor battalion until he escaped. Other people were living in his childhood home and no one had heard of his family or Anna. Initially, he found no surviving relatives. With few options, he decided to leave with a friend to Romania and enroll in the medical school at the
University of Cluj A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
. Months after the war had ended, Ornstein was still in medical school in Romania when he discovered that his mother and three younger brothers were murdered in Auschwitz. However, in the same week, he got two telegrams from Budapest: one from his father, who had survived a six-month death march, and the other from Anna, who had survived Auschwitz. He hid in a freight train and returned to Budapest.


Life after the Holocaust

Although Anna's deportation to
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
separated them during the war, Paul and Anna found their way back to one another. The two married in 1946. Three weeks after their marriage, Paul and Anna attempted to flee Hungary. At first, the government apprehended them, gave them a warning, and then released them. After their second attempt, the Zionist Underground Movement helped Anna and Paul safely into
Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
. Upon briefly staying in Vienna, the two left for
Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
and then to
Heidelberg, Germany Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
.


Medical training

Paul's began his second year of medical school at the University of Budapest as the Communists seized power, before escaping with Anna to Western Europe. Paul attended one year of medical school at the University of Munich and then he and Anna enrolled at the Heidelberg University School of Medicine, where many former Nazi soldiers were their classmates and some still wore parts of their uniforms. They lived and studied in Heidelberg until 1952 they immigrated to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
with refugee visas. However, only five states would allow them to take medical board exams which would certify them as American doctors, merely because of their immigrant status. Eventually, the two moved to Ohio, and he scored the highest in the state on the exam. The United States had almost no residency training programs that would accept immigrants, so Paul and Anna found work in hospitals in Delaware, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts until 1955 when the
University of Cincinnati Medical School The University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center (AHC) is a collection of health colleges and institutions of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. It trains health care professionals and provides research and patient care. AHC has st ...
's chair of psychiatry - who was also a psychoanalyst - recruited them. Paul and Anna also are graduates of the
Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute (formerly Institute for Psychoanalysis until it was renamed in May 2018) is a center for psychoanalytic research, training, and education on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. The institute provides professio ...
.


Career

Both Paul and Anna Ornstein were pioneers in the self psychology movement, which challenged traditional Freudian analysis and pushed therapists to disregard any misconceptions and enter fully into their patients' lives. Heinz Kohut trained both Paul and Anna, and Paul was one of three of Kohut's disciples who Kohut expected to carry his legacy. Ornstein worked as a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis at the
University of Cincinnati Medical School The University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center (AHC) is a collection of health colleges and institutions of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. It trains health care professionals and provides research and patient care. AHC has st ...
, Lecturer at
Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
, and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He was also a prolific writer, clinician, lecturer, teacher, and mentor. Ornstein served on many editorial boards and published over 100 scholarly, clinical, and theoretical articles in numerous languages - many of which he wrote with his wife Anna. He wrote ''Focal Psychotherapy: An Example of Applied Psychoanalysis'' with Michael Balint and
Enid Balint Enid Balint or Enid Flora Balint-Edmonds (1 December 1903 – 19 July 1994) was a British psychoanalyst and welfare worker. Life Enid Flora Albu was born on 1 December 1903 in London. Her early education was at Hampstead High School and Chelte ...
and also edited four volumes of ''The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut''. In 2015, he published a memoir, ''Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst'', which
Helen Epstein Helen Epstein is an American writer of memoir, journalism and biography who lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States. Biography Early life and education Helen Epstein is the daughter of Kurt Epstein and Franci Rabinek, both survivors o ...
co-authored. In May 2019,
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis ''The International Journal of Psychoanalysis'' is an academic journal in the field of psychoanalysis. The idea of the journal was proposed by Ernest Jones in a letter to Sigmund Freud dated 7 December 1918. The journal itself was established in 1 ...
published a multi-page obituary for Ornstein detailing his incredible life and immense impact on psychoanalysis. The piece's author, psychoanalyst Dr. Jeffrey K. Halpern, explains Ornstein's contributions to psychoanalysis and psychiatry:
"Ornstein’s writings encompassed the uses of empathy, the interpretative process, omnipotence in health and illness, “Chronic Rage from Underground,” unconscious fantasy, dreams, the conceptualization of clinical facts and the patient's encounters with the analyst's theory...Ornstein deepened our knowledge of patients who suffer from narcissistic personality and behaviour disorders and expanded psychoanalytic techniques. He developed einz
Kohut Kohut, Kogut, or Kohout is a surname of Slavic-language origin, meaning rooster. Notable people with the surname include: Kohut * Adolph Kohut (1848–1917), German-Hungarian journalist and historian * Andrew Kohut (1942–2015), American pollst ...
's original contributions, especially the functions of empathy and the conceptualization of narcissistic transferences, later referred to as selfobject transferences within a self-selfobject matrix. He described a basic direction, still often neglected, for analytic treatment; a patient first needs to feel accepted and understood before it is meaningful to understand, and it is only then that a patient and an analyst can work on a structure for the interpretive process (Ornstein and Ornstein 1996). Before his encounter with self psychology, Ornstein wrote that a structure for the interpretative process is built from our sustained efforts at understanding a patient's conscious and unconscious mental life (Ornstein and Kalthoff 1967; Ornstein 1968). Ornstein, more than Kohut and other self psychologists, focused on the way the analyst and patient get to interpretations rather than on the contents of interpretations."


Family

Paul and Anna, both Holocaust survivors, were married for 71 years. The two entered medical school, psychoanalysis, and self-psychology together, leading very intertwined lives as professionals. Not only did the couple often conduct research and lead workshops together, they both served as faculty members at
University of Cincinnati Medical School The University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center (AHC) is a collection of health colleges and institutions of the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. It trains health care professionals and provides research and patient care. AHC has st ...
and later lecturers at
Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
. They also co-founded and formally served as co-directors of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology. The couple raised three children and have seven grandchildren. His children, Sharone, Miriam, and Rafael, all became psychiatrists, and two of them became psychoanalysts.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ornstein, Paul American psychoanalysts Jewish psychoanalysts American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent 1924 births 2017 deaths Hungarian emigrants to the United States