Hanns Sachs (; 10 January 1881, in

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– 10 January 1947, in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

) was one of the earliest psychoanalysts, and a close personal friend of

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 pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

. He became a member of Freud's Secret Committee of six in 1912, Freud describing him as one "in whom my confidence is unlimited in spite of the shortness of our acquaintance". In 1939, he founded ''

American Imago ''American Imago'' is an academic journal established in 1939 by Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs. It seeks to explore the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary cultural, literary, and social theory, while also considering issues related to anthropol ...

''.

Life and career

Born into a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, the son of a lawyer, Sachs was himself practicing as a lawyer in the early twentieth century when he began following Freud's lectures at the University of Vienna: he finally made himself known to Freud and joined the Wednesday Psychological Society by 1910. He presented a paper to the Congress of 1911, and in 1912 began co-editing the journal ''Imago'' on non-medical applications of psychoanalysis. Refused for army service due to short-sightedness, Sachs spent much of the war helping Freud continue to produce psychoanalytic journals, and in 1919 he decided to change from law to (lay) analysis, practicing in Berlin from 1920 onwards. Among the analysts he helped train were

Nina Searl Mary Nina Searl (13 October 1883 – 26 February 1955) was an English psychologist and one of the earliest British child psychoanalysts, who came by way of the Brunswick Square Clinic to become a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Sh ...

and

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...

, Rudolf Loewenstein and

Michael Balint , , image = Monte Verità Gedenktafel Michael Balint 1K4A4638-b.jpg , caption = , birth_name = Mihály Maurice Bergsmann , birth_date = , birth_place = Budapest , death_date = , death_place = London , occupation = psychoan ...

. With the rise of Hitler, Sachs moved from Berlin to Boston in 1932, but remained in close contact with Freud himself: at the latter's deathbed in 1939, he said to Sachs that "I know I have at least ''one'' friend in America". He published an affectionate memoir of Freud (which Freud's biographer

Peter Gay Peter Joachim Gay (né Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Sc ...

deemed indispensable) in 1945.

Ernest Jones Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first En ...

, who considered Sachs his closest friend among the Viennese, adjudged him both the wittiest and the most apolitical of Freud's inner circle.

Theoretical contributions

Sachs' first analytic publication, on the subject of dreams (1912) was cited by Freud in his study of

group psychology Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (''intra''group dynamics), or between social groups ( ''inter''group dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision ...

, as was his later study of 1920 on 'The Community of Daydreams'. In the latter, Sachs explored the role of relieving guilt feelings provided by the sharing of daydreams in children, and of art experiences in adults. His study of

Caligula Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (31 August 12 – 24 January 41), better known by his nickname Caligula (), was the third Roman emperor, ruling from 37 until his assassination in 41. He was the son of the popular Roman general Germani ...

emphasised the shifting characters of those dominated by fleeting and unstable identifications; his work on the female superego stressed the importance/difficulty of desexualising the superego incorporation of the father. Sachs was also interested in film and psychoanalysis, and published on their connection in '' Close Up''. Maggie Humm, ''Modernist Women and Visual Cultures'' (2003) p. 145

English publications

* Hanns Sachs, 'The Community of Daydreams', in ''The Creative Unconscious'' (1942) * Hanns Sachs, 'One of the Motive Factors in the Formation of the Superego in Women', ''

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 ...

'' X 1929 * Hanns Sachs, ''Caligula'' (1930) * Hanns Sachs, ''Freud, Master and Friend'' (1945) * Hanns Sachs, ''Masks of Love and Life'' (1948)

References

External links

* *
''Hanns Sachs - Austrian psychoanalyst''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sachs, Hans 1881 births 1947 deaths Austrian Jews Psychoanalysts from Vienna Jewish psychoanalysts Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Members of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society

Life and career

Theoretical contributions

English publications

See also

References

Further reading

External links