ABSTRACT
Georg Groddeck (1866–1934), a German physician drawn to Freud and psychoanalysis in 1917, is much less known to English-speaking audiences than his good friend, Sándor Ferenczi. Groddeck produced a prolific body of writing, most untranslated into English. An early explorer of the relationship between physical and mental illness, Groddeck established a sanatorium in Baden-Baden in 1900. He believed that illness is a symbolic psychic expression and, as body and mind are inseparable, the treatment must be both psychological and physical. He has often been championed as the “father of psychosomatic medicine” (Groddeck, 1977, p. 9). In the years before meeting Freud, Groddeck rejected the “Freudian school”, later admitting he had been jealous of Freud. He then taught himself psychoanalysis (p. 32). While most of the psychoanalytic world was suspicious of Groddeck, Freud declared that he had to “claim” Groddeck because “the discovery that transference and resistance are the most important aspects of treatment turns a person irretrievably into a member of the wild army [of psychoanalysis]” (p. 36). In his first letter to Groddeck, Freud connected him with Ferenczi by mentioning Ferenczi’s recent paper, “Disease- or patho-neuroses” (1916/17) (p. 36). Later, Freud assured Groddeck’s renown, acknowledging in his book, The Ego and the Id, that he had borrowed the term “Id” (Das Es) from Groddeck.
