Erwin Walter Maximilian Straus (11 November 1891,
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...
– 20 May 1975,
Lexington, Kentucky) was a German-American
phenomenologist and
neurologist
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...
who helped to pioneer anthropological medicine and psychiatry, a holistic approach to medicine that is critical of mechanistic and reductionistic approaches to understanding and treating human beings.
Some of his work can also be regarded as a precursor to or early version of
neurophenomenology. Straus taught at
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...
.
His books published in English include:
* ''Phenomenology: Pure and Applied'' (1964,
Duquesne University Press
Duquesne University Press, founded in 1927, is a publisher that is part of Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Press is the scholarly publishing arm of Duquesne University, and publishes monographs and collections in the humanit ...
)
* ''Phenomenological Psychology'' (1966,
Basic Books)
* ''Psychiatry and Philosophy'' (1969, Springer)
* ''Phenomenology of Memory'' (1970,
Duquesne University Press
Duquesne University Press, founded in 1927, is a publisher that is part of Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Press is the scholarly publishing arm of Duquesne University, and publishes monographs and collections in the humanit ...
)
* ''Language and Language Disturbances'' (1974,
Duquesne University Press
Duquesne University Press, founded in 1927, is a publisher that is part of Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Press is the scholarly publishing arm of Duquesne University, and publishes monographs and collections in the humanit ...
)
* ''Man, Time, and World: Two Contributions to Anthropological Psychology'' (1982, Humanities Press)
* ''On Obsession: A Clinical and Methodological Study'' (1987, Johnson Reprint Corp)
Bibliography
* ''Zu Leben und Werk von Erwin Walter Maximilian Straus (1891-1975''), by Franz Bossong (1991, Königshausen & Neumann)
External links
Decade of the Person: Tribute to Erwin Straus MD by Brian Koehler
1891 births
1975 deaths
20th-century American psychologists
German psychologists
University of Kentucky faculty
German emigrants to the United States
{{Germany-med-bio-stub