Felix Tretter (born in 1949 in

Villach Villach (; ; ; ) is the seventh-largest city in Austria and the second-largest in the federal state of Carinthia. It is an important traffic junction for southern Austria and the whole Alpe-Adria region. , the population is 61,887. Together wit ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

) is an Austrian

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

and

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

. From 1992 to 2014 he was head of the

addiction Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use can ...

department of the Isar-Amper-Klinikum München-Ost, formerly known as ''Bezirkskrankenhaus Haar'',

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. His scientific work has emphasis on

modelling A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided into ...

of psychophysical scenarios in

schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...

and addiction research with methods of

systems science Systems science, also referred to as systems research or simply systems, is a transdisciplinary field that is concerned with understanding simple and complex systems in nature and society, which leads to the advancements of formal, natural, socia ...

Biography

Felix Tretter graduated in

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

, and

economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

at the

universities A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. Subsequently, he worked as a scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. After earning doctorates as Dr. phil.,

Dr. med. Doctor Medicinae, also spelled Doctor Medicinæ and abbreviated Dr. Med., is a higher doctoral degree (a research doctorate) in medicine awarded by universities in Denmark and formerly in Norway. It is officially translated as Doctor of Medical ...

and Dr. rer. pol. he

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

to qualify as a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well ...

at the Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich. Additionally, he was for several years involved in the constitution of

environmental medicine Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicine, environmental science, chemistry and others, overlapping with environmental pathology. It can be viewed as the medical branch of the broader field of environmental health. ...

in Germany. Board-certified for

neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior. ...

, and

psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of Psychology, psychological methods, particularly when based on regular Conversation, personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase hap ...

he was appointed the head of the

department of the Bezirkskrankenhaus Haar, a tertiary

psychiatric Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, mood, emotion, and behavior. Initial psychiatric assessment of ...

hospital in the east of Munich. He held this position up to his retirement in 2014. Felix Tretter is deputy head of the Bavarian Academy for Addiction and Health Issues (''Bayerische Akademie für Sucht- und Gesundheitsfragen''). Since 2015 he is fellow at the Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS) in Vienna.

Scientific work

Tretter wrote research papers, review articles, and books. The main focus of his scientific work is mathematical description of

neuropsychological Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...

mechanisms in the evolution of

and

. He aims at describing psychosocial problems from a perspective of

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

systems A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and is exp ...

and ecology. Additional publications by Tretter include

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological system ...

and theory of medicine applied to different fields, including

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

Selected publications

Books

* Tretter, F. Ökologie der Sucht. Hogrefe Verlag 1998. * Tretter, F. Systemtheorie im klinischen Kontext. Pabst, Lengerich 2005 * Tretter, F. Ökologie der Person. Pabst, Lengerich 2008, * Tretter, F., Grünhut, C. Ist das Gehirn der Geist? Grundfragen der Neurophysiologie. Hogrefe, Göttingen, 2010. * Tretter, F. Sucht. Gehirn. Gesellschaft. Medizinisch Wissenchaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin 2016. * Tretter, F. (Editor) Suchtmedizin kompakt. Schattauer, Stuttgart 2008, 2012 und 2017. . * Tretter, F., Winterer, G., (Editor), Gebicke-Haerter, P. J., Mendoza, E. R. (Editors) Systems Biology in Psychiatric Research: From High-Throughput Data to Mathematical Modeling. Wiley-Blackwell 2010

Selected research papers and review articles

* * * * * * * * * *

References

External links

Tretter's homepage

Author's portrait
at the Medizinisch-Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft {{DEFAULTSORT:Tretter, Felix 1949 births People from Villach Austrian psychiatrists Austrian neurologists Cyberneticists Living people Austrian scientists Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni University of Vienna alumni