Abstract: Groddeck’s ideas are alive. The genius of this doctor and psychoanalyst will only achieve its due appraisal if we can put his intuitions and clinical tools to work. In this paper I present four patients with their physical complaints and the hidden sources of their suffering, using his conceptions.
The integrity of the human being, the mind and body intertwined, both expressions of the same It that lives us, is the core of the contribution of Georg Groddeck to our well-being and development. He also produced texts on Art, Literature and communitarian cooperation that enlarge our understanding of the whole, to which we belong.
The application of Groddeck’s principles to the psychotherapy of psychosomatic patients show how can we help and benefit people, in a true ‘learning from the ill’.
the lecture in pdf format

Abstract: Are resistances that hinder progress in learning how to play an instrument comparable to illness? How can they be overcome? Is “psychosomatically-informed teaching” possible and appropriate in our school system? Using a number of examples, possibilities with be presented of integrating Groddeck’s ideas advantageously into music teaching. Mention will also be made of critical idea on the limits of such an approach.
To create an apposite mood, the speaker will play …explosante-fixe… for solo flute (1971), a work on the key of E flat by Pierre Boulez, who died this year in Baden-Baden.

Abstract: Groddeck studied in Berlin, where he was also an assistant to his teacher, Prof. Schweninger. Later he was often in the city to give lectures.

Abstract: Groddeck had made Freud known in 1917 with his working hypothesis about the It. Freud used a modified version of Groddeck’s term for his second topical structural model for the psyche. By contrast, Groddeck’s concept of the It is more all-embracing. He used it to clarify the dynamic interaction between body and soul, and it enabled him to explain his ability to influence organic processes through conversations. Referring to Spinoza’s theory of identity, Groddeck advocated a monism in which body and soul are merely two different manifestations of the same substance and not separate entities, as was the predominant Cartesian way of thinking. His It represents everything that was dynamic and lively in man.

Abstract: Groddeck’s concept of the symbol refers to the dramatic arts: the body as a stage for the psychological play. Considering the question of whether the actors survive the play or, as can happen, die while on the so-called boards that mean the world, I will regard the Groddeck symbol as a psycho-physical signifier in a chain which links the unconscious Es with its body-manifestations up to the point of indissoluble identity, thanks to a “point de capiton” (or anchoring point), as Lacan might put it. This concept of the symbol is embedded in a theory of psychosomatic totality that reflects Groddeck’s holistic thinking and its intriguing combination of the archaic and the post-modern. I will be presenting to clinical evidence.

Abstract: Groddeck was considerably older than Erich Fromm. However his influence on Fromm is evident. On the occasion of Groddeck’s death, Fromm wrote from New York to Groddeck’s wife: “He was so great as a man that you only considered the psychologist on second thoughts. … Every conversation with him was a source of new insights; his profound and broad view of man was only possible thanks to his own humanity.”

Abstract: My first encounter with Georg Groddeck was almost 20 years ago. Was it pure coincidence? It may well have been – if you believe in coincidences, which I don’t: I’m convinced that my Es steered me in that direction, and that Es is still hovering about the place. Since our encounter, Groddeck has played a huge role for me, and I will report on this in my contribution: on the first frenzied reading of the Buch vom Es and its significance for me both back then and today; on my attempt to translate the work; on my meeting with Nancy Bratt, a Swedish-Danish psychologist who was treated by Groddeck when she was very young and who translated some of his texts into Swedish (I then translated her translations into German!). Higgledy-piggledy? Partly – yet quite in keeping with Groddeck.

Abstract: The ongoing controversial debate about the integration of body-psychotherapeutic methods into analytical psychotherapy is inhibited by scepticism, numerous misunderstandings and contradictions. Touch and movement represent essential differences between a “purely verbal” psychoanalytical treatment and body-process psychotherapy. The differences and similarities in the integration of the physical dimension into body-psychotherapeutic treatment (taking functional relaxation as a body-psychotherapeutic procedure) and psychoanalytical treatment will be illustrated using brief case vignettes.

Abstract: Georg Groddeck was not only active himself as a writer and doctor communicating his psychosomatic concepts in literary form; his views about the impact of the soul on the body have also been taken up repeatedly by various authors for the purposes of artistic interpretation, right up to the present day. My lecture uses two concrete examples to show the extent to which Georg Groddeck can be of interest when interpreting literary texts. I will focus here on Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain (1924) and Uwe Tellkamp’s novel The Tower (2008). Both texts make reference to Groddeck’s teachings on psychosomatics and integrate these into the novels’ events, albeit with different accentuations. The Magic Mountain addresses the theme of how the soul can have an impact as an “sickness-creating power”, whereby doubt is cast on the postulate of the primacy of the body. In The Tower, by contrast, Groddeck and his work undergo a semantization in the politico-economic and the sociological context of GDR society, with reference not least to the remains of Dresden’s ideological roots in the bourgeoisie of the early 20^th century.

Abstract: How can Groddeck’s Es emerge and prevail in a conflict with Freud that hovers between priority struggle and the (strained) relationship between teacher and disciple?

Abstract: The paper will consider what there is to be learned from Groddeck today. Emphasis will be placed on the contemporary relevance of The Book of the It and Groddeck’s significance for the history of psychoanalysis.
the lecture in pdf format

Abstract: Groddeck regards sickness and recovery as a creative act on the part of the powers of the Es. The focusing technique offers access to an inner body experience that unfolds in an imaginary space in the depths of the soul. This imaginary space is based on earliest, preverbal mirror experiences with primary objects and constitutes the foundation of a physical proto-self when physical and mental states form a unit and the powers of the Es become effective. The leap into the imaginary facilitates access to these primal experiences that are manifest in the physical and serves as the basis of a holistic psychosomatics. Taking clinical examples and by means of a small demonstration, insight will be given into a special treatment technique and its integration into psychoanalytical work with patients.

Abstract: His one-year clinical further training and his completion of a dissertation under Prof. Ernst Schweninger at the then famous Charité in Berlin predestined Groddeck to be a doctor who would at least also be active in the field of naturopathy. Shortly afterwards he was able, in the subsequent 34 years no less, and as director of the Marienhöhe sanatorium in Baden-Baden, to engage in all combinations of nutrition therapy, therapeutic baths, massages with psychotherapy – which even today still find the greatest approval, intuitively and explicitly, among the respective patients.
 
For some advocates of today’s naturopathy, the “healer form Baden-Baden” is almost an ideal type who underpins the intellectually much more extravagant paths of psychoanalysis with down-to-earth medical building material. Yet the majority surely have only a rudimentary knowledge of him.
 
It is more relevant today than ever before to confront those patients who beset us with psychological ailments and the most varied physical experiences with his legacy. So far, body-oriented psychotherapy has only done justice to it at one level. Its natural continuation is to be found in active exercise therapy. Other contributions, such as by nutrition therapy, including fasting, are scientifically totally vague, and massage, so highly regarded by Groddeck, as well as balneology have only been subjected to rudimentary research and use.

Abstract: Today as in Groddeck’s day, psychotherapeutic work hovers between scientific aspiration and medical art. Groddeck vehemently supported medical art and regarded making it more scientific as a process of law making that impeded new discoveries and falsified the relationship between patient and doctor because of schematisation. In the course of the therapeutic process, he himself tried to rediscover the patient’s existence as subject.
How can the canon of psychoanalytical theory and its scientific rationale be linked with individual practise? In what shape is the therapeutic art today, in times of constant scientific evaluation?