https://www.therapyroute.com/article/healing-wounded-history-by-gm-heuer
Freud's
'Outstanding' Colleague/Jung's 'Twin Brother': The suppressed psychoanalytic
and political significance of Otto Gross, by Gottfried M. Heuer, Routledge, 2016
Otto Gross was the first analyst to link his work with
radical politics, connecting inner, personal transformation with outer,
collective change. Since his death in 1920 his work has been suppressed,
despite his seminal influence on the developing analytic discipline and on the
fields of sociology, philosophy and literature. Here Gottfried M. Heuer
introduces Gross’ life and ideas, using an innovative, historiographic
methodology he terms trans-historical: a psychoanalytic,
intersubjective, and trans-temporal approach to the past, aimed at ‘healing
wounded history’ in the present.
Heuer considers several previously unpublished sources to
explore Gross’s ideas and legacy as well as his unusually bohemian life. His
use of the anarchist concept of mutuality to develop a relational and
intersubjective approach in his own analytic theory and clinical practice was
unique, and his work had a lasting, yet unacknowledged, influence on Freud,
Jung (with whom he had the first recorded mutual analysis) and many other
analysts. His ideas were appropriated by Max Weber, the founder of sociology, and
by the philosopher Martin Buber, playing a pivotal role in what we now call
‘modernity’. Heuer also explores Gross’s paradigmatic father/son battle with
his father Hans, who established the science of criminology, and touches upon
Gross’s links to the literary field of the early 20th century
via Kafka, Werfel, et al., German expressionism and the Dada-movement, as well
as the Anglo-American world through the work of D. H. Lawrence.
This
innovative, multi-faceted approach to Gross’s work and its influence marks a
turning point, putting him firmly on the map of the historiography of analysis
as well as linking this field with the neighbouring disciplines of the history
of law and criminology, literature, sociology and philosophy. In addition,
Gross continuing relevance for leading edge clinical and political ideas is
addressed. This book will be essential reading for Jungian and Freudian
analysts, psychotherapists and counsellors, academics and students of analysis,
politics, history, criminology and sociology.(amazon) (kindle 2017-9-19)
Gottfried M. Heuer
is a Jungian training analyst and supervisor, neo-Reichian body psychotherapist
and independent scholar based in London, with some 70 papers published in the
major analytic journals. He is co-founder of the International Otto Gross
Society as well as a published graphic artist, photographer, sculptor and poet.
His previous books include Sacral Revolutions. Reflecting on the Work
of Andrew Samuels and Sexual Revolutions: Psychoanalysis,
History and the Father (both Routledge).
Gottfried M. Heuer talks to Jonathan Chadwick about
this book on https://vimeo.com/196609212 (amazon)
