HITSCHMANN, EDWARD

HITSCHMANN, EDWARD (1871–1957), Austrian psychiatrist. Born in Vienna, he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1905, the year he was introduced to *Freud. In the early days Hitschmann was less convinced than some others of the incestuous roots of neurosis. While he wrote on many clinical problems and published his Freuds Neurosenlehre (1911; Freud's Theories of the Neuroses, 1913), he became interested in the psychoanalytic study of outstanding literary personalities. His first works in this field were on Schopenhauer whose saintliness he felt was a reaction against his sensuality, and Swedenborg whom he saw as suffering from religious paranoia as a result of the fulfillment of an infantile wish to surpass his father and of homosexuality. Hitschmann, like Freud, admired Goethe and in 1913 he wrote "Goethe als Vatersymbol." Hitschmenn felt that creation was evolved in two stages. The first was the moment of inspiration acknowledging something which had been in preparation a long time and the second phase was the elaboration. Creative power he felt was related to giving up daydreaming because of guilt feelings. His other works include psychoanalytic studies of Brahms, Schubert, Werfel, William James, Samuel Johnson, and James Boswell. Hitschmann founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Clinic in 1922 and was its director until 1938. He left before the Nazis came to power, and after two years in London immigrated to Boston. In 1947 he wrote "New Varieties of Religious Experience." He saw belief as related to the overrated father of childhood. His Great Men appeared in 1956.

bibliography:

P.L. Becker, in: F.G. Alexander et al. (eds.), Psychoanalytic Pioneers (1966), 160–8; A. Grinstein, Index of Psychoanalytic Writings, 2 (1957); 7 (1964).

[Louis Miller]