loan via the Internet Archive for 2 wks (2019-4-25)
Paul J. Stern (1921–1982)
Paul Stern, an American psychologist
and one of the last graduates of Harvard University’s famous PhD program in
clinical psychology, was born into a German Reform Jewish family on June 6,
1921. His devastating Second World War experiences as a youth had a lifelong
effect. He was captured by the Nazis in connection with the Kristallnacht at
age 17 and briefly interned in Buchenwald before being ransomed by his family.
Fleeing to Vichy France he was repeatedly caught and sent to French detention
camps from which he just as repeatedly escaped. One of these escapes was
effected with the help of a sympathetic SS officer who appreciated the gentle,
intelligent spirit he observed when Stern presented and recited Western
classics in the evening officer quarter “soirées” at the officer’s “request.”
This act of kindness, led Stern, after the war to write an article, entitled
“World War II as seen through the eyes of an SS Officer” for a famous Parisian
publication.
Stern’s early adulthood was indelibly
shaped by the danger and uncertainty of the times, leaving him wary of
strangers and passersby and, to the end of his life, harboring a dislike for
anyone wearing sunglasses. Stern eventually managed to escape France altogether
by stealing through mid‐winter Alps with his uncle. From there, he gradually
found his way to Zurich where he eventually met Medard Boss through his
university studies. The two men developed an unusually tender relationship for
Boss, one lasting until the unfortunately premature end of Stern’s life from
cancer in 1982. While in Switzerland, he supported himself by writing anonymous
articles which were placed by a sympathetic stalwart woman press agent named
Mrs. Dukas. After returning to France, Stern emigrated to the United States and
continued his studies in psychology with J.F.T. Bugental at UCLA in the early
1950s. From there he enrolled in Harvard’s PhD program in clinical psychology
where he worked especially closely with Robert White and Gordon Allport.
Throughout this time, he continued both a personal and professional
relationship with Boss, not only arranging for Boss’s 1963 lectures at Harvard
but also, the following year, publishing a book for the Harvard Divinity School
comparing existential (daseinsanalytic) and psychoanalytic approaches to human
suffering and psychotherapy and entitled The Abnormal Person and His World (Stern
1964). His own short but scintillating masterpiece, In Praise of Madness … The
Self Reclaimed (Stern 1972), introduces what he called “Realness Therapy” and
contains evocative chapters on madness, dreams, and psychotherapy animated throughout
with little gems like this: “The gentle therapist must be lucid and plain
spoken. He need not be a simpleton” (Stern 1972, p. 116). He also wrote a
revisionist biography of Carl Jung called “The Haunted Prophet” in 1976 while
continuing to publish psychology articles for the European and American lay
press. Stern’s final contributions to the daseinsanalytic literature are found
in his preface to Boss’s second book on dreams (Stern 1977) and his
introduction to Boss’s Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology
(Stern 1979).
van Deurzen, Emmy. The Wiley World
Handbook of Existential Therapy (pp. 112-113). Wiley. 2019, Kindle edition.
