ABSTRACT

The return to the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud by the group around Muller-Braunschweig was a long process of intellectual renewal and institutional reorganization. The acceptance of the German Psychoanalytical Association as a Component Society of the International Psychoanalytical Association at the Amsterdam International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Congress in 1951 forged connections at an institutional level. The aim was to revive a vital awareness of Freud and to encourage the breakthrough of psychoanalysis in the public sphere of post-war Germany. The "Hamburger Psychoanalytische Arbeitsgemeinschaft" was founded in 1955; alongside Berlin, in 1959, it is the second training institute in Germany, with Gerhard Scheunert, Ulrich Ehebald, Wolf-Dietrich Grodzicki, and Hans-Jurgen Seeberger as leading members. Wolfgang Loch sought to synthesize the diverse theoretical approaches in psychoanalysis: ego psychology and theories of object relationships, explaining and understanding, as well as psychoanalysis as a natural science and as hermeneutics.