Siegfried Bernfeld (May 7, 1892,

Lemberg Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...

Galicia Galicia may refer to: Geographic regions * Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain ** Gallaecia, a Roman province ** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia ** The medieval King ...

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

(today

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

) – April 2, 1953,

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

) was an Austrian

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the pre ...

and

educator A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

who was a native of

(now

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...

, Ukraine). Etchegoyen, R. Horacio. "Siegfried Bernfeld." ''International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis''. Ed. Alain de Mijolla. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, 2016-10-14. In 1915 he completed his Ph.D. in

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hi ...

, where he also studied

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

, and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

. Siegfried Bernfeld was of Jewish ancestry. While still a student, he was involved in the psychoanalytical movement, and later became an important member of the

Vienna Psychoanalytic Society The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (, WPV), formerly known as the Wednesday Psychological Society, is the oldest psychoanalysis society in the world. In 1908, reflecting its growing institutional status as the international psychoanalytic authority ...

. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, when Vienna became home to over 100,000 refugees, many of them Jews from Galicia, Bernfeld became interested in developing new forms of Jewish education catering to the needs of these young Jews; in summer 1917 the Zionist organization in Vienna recruited him to lead its education and youth work. From 1917 to 1921 Bernfeld was in charge of ''Zionistischen Zentralrat für West-Österreich'' (Zionist Central Council for Western-Austria), and in 1919 he headed a project called ''Kinderheim Baumgarten'', which provided housing and education for 300 Jewish children from Poland, who were displaced during the war. From 1922 until 1925 he practiced psychoanalysis in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, where one of his analysands was the British scientist

Lionel Penrose Lionel Sharples Penrose, FRS (11 June 1898 – 12 May 1972) was an English psychiatrist, medical geneticist, paediatrician, mathematician and chess theorist, who carried out pioneering work on the genetics of intellectual disability. Penr ...

. From 1925 to 1932 he worked at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Subsequently he returned to Vienna, and with the threat of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

, went into exile in

Menton Menton (; , written ''Menton'' in classical norm or ''Mentan'' in Mistralian norm; it, Mentone ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border. Me ...

on the

French Riviera The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation " Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend from ...

, where he stayed until 1936. Afterwards he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as an educator in

. In a 1931 article published on the journal edited by

Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

, Bernfeld defined psychoanalysis coiningOccurrences
on Google Books. the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

term ''Spurenwissenschaft'' ("science of traces"). He is also remembered for his research in providing a link between psychoanalysis and educational theory. He was interested in the role of education, and how it related to issues such as social change and social inequality. He was an early proponent of Freudo-Marxism, and developed theories regarding the correlation of psychoanalysis with

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes th ...

. He regarded educational reformer Gustav Wyneken (1875-1964) an early influence in his career, and was a member of several liberal and "youth culture" organizations. Among his written works was an influential book on infant psychology called ''Psychologie des Säuglings'', and a 1925 work on educational theory titled ''Sisyphos'', in which Bernfeld advocates a non-authoritarian educational system that stresses the importance of the

instinct Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing both innate (inborn) and learned elements. The simplest example of an instinctive behaviour is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a v ...

ual life and the needs of the student. He also published an important work on psychoanalytic interpretation called ''Der Begriff der "Deutung" in der Psychoanalyse'', in which he explains the correlation of psychoanalysis to scientific principles. Later in his career, he published several articles about the early scientific work of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

References

External links

* Biographical entry by R. Horacio Etchegoyen, ''International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis'' (2005), via ''Answers.com''
Guide to the Papers of Siegfried Bernfeld
(RG 6).

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word ' ...

* Rolnik, E. J. (2012
Freud in Zion: Psychoanalysis and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity Karnac:London
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernfeld, Siegfried 1892 births 1953 deaths People in health professions from Lviv People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria Ukrainian Jews Austrian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Freudo-Marxism Austrian educators Austrian psychiatrists Jewish psychiatrists Jewish socialists Analysands of Hanns Sachs Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss