Paul Hermann Ornstein | |
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Born | April 4, 1924 Hajdúnánás, Hungary |
Died | January 19, 2017 | (aged 92)
Alma mater | Heidelberg University School of Medicine |
Known for | Self-psychology |
Spouse | Anna Ornstein |
Children | 3 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Psychoanalysis |
Institutions | Professor of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis at University of Cincinnati Medical School |
Paul Hermann Ornstein (April 4, 1924 - January 19, 2017) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor.
Early life
Ornstein was born in Hungary in a Jewish family to parents, Abraham Ornstein, an accountant, and Frieda Sziment.[1] At 15, Ornstein left home to attend Franz Josef National Rabbinical Seminary in Debrecen, Hungary. On a visit home from seminary, he met his future wife Anna Brunn.
Interest in psychoanalysis
While he did attend a rabbinical seminary, he did not want to become a rabbi; rather, he wanted to study literature, archaeology, and philosophy. His interest in psychology evolved from reading novels, handwriting analysis, and poetry. At the seminary, he joined a study group that read Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud as well as Thalassa by Sándor Ferenczi and Ritual by Theodor Reik. Reik's book fostered Ornstein's interest in psychoanalysis especially because of his ability to connect it to his daily life as an observant Jew. Thus, at 15, he decided that he wanted to be a psychoanalyst.[2]
The Holocaust
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In March 1944, Germans invaded Hungary, and Ornstein was forced by the German Army to dig trenches as part of a forced labor battalion in World War II on the eastern front of Poland and Ukraine.[3]
After the Red Army pushed west, he spent several months during 1944 hiding in the basement of the annex of the Swiss Embassy in Budapest. When the war ended, he returned to his home town in Hungary; he was just 17 and initially found no surviving relatives. Later, he reunited with his father.[1][4]
Medical training
After the Holocaust, Paul and Anna were reunited and both enrolled in medical school together in Germany at the Heidelberg University School of Medicine.[5] He is also a graduate of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.[6]
Life after the Holocaust
Three weeks after their marriage, Paul and Anna attempted to flee Hungary. At first, the government apprehended them, gave them a warning, and then released them. After their second attempt, the Zionist Underground Movement helped Anna and Paul safely into Vienna, Austria. Upon briefly staying in Vienna, the two left for Bavaria and then to Heidelberg, Germany. In Heidelberg, they began medical school together at the Heidelberg University School of Medicine, where there were many former Nazi soldiers among their classmates.[1] They lived and studied in Heidelberg until 1952, when they immigrated to the United States.[5] However, only five states would allow them to take medical board exams which would certify them as American doctors, merely because of their immigrant status. Eventually, the two moved to Ohio, and he scored the highest in the state on the exam.[7]
Career
Both Paul and Anna Ornstein were pioneers in the self psychology movement, which challenged traditional Freudian analysis[1] and pushed therapists to disregard any misconceptions and enter fully into their patients' lives.[8] Heinz Kohut trained both Paul and Anna, and Paul was one of three of Kohut's disciples who Kohut expected to carry his legacy.[3]
Ornstein worked as a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis at the University of Cincinnati Medical School, Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He was also a prolific writer, clinician, lecturer, teacher, and mentor. Ornstein served on many editorial boards and published over 100 scholarly, clinical, and theoretical articles in numerous languages - many of which he wrote with Anna Ornstein.[2]
He wrote Focal Psychotherapy: An Example of Applied Psychoanalysis with Michael Balint and Enid Balint and also edited four volumes of The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut.[6] In 2015, he published a memoir, Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst, which Helen Epstein co-authored.[9][10]
In May 2019, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis published a multi-page obituary for Ornstein detailing his incredible life and immense impact on psychoanalysis.[2] The piece's author, psychoanalyst Dr. Jeffrey K. Halpern, explains Ornstein's contributions to psychoanalysis and psychiatry:
"Ornstein’s writings encompassed the uses of empathy, the interpretative process, omnipotence in health and illness, “Chronic Rage from Underground,” unconscious fantasy, dreams, the conceptualization of clinical facts and the patient's encounters with the analyst's theory...Ornstein deepened our knowledge of patients who suffer from narcissistic personality and behaviour disorders and expanded psychoanalytic techniques. He developed [Heinz] Kohut's original contributions, especially the functions of empathy and the conceptualization of narcissistic transferences, later referred to as selfobject transferences within a self-selfobject matrix. He described a basic direction, still often neglected, for analytic treatment; a patient first needs to feel accepted and understood before it is meaningful to understand, and it is only then that a patient and an analyst can work on a structure for the interpretive process (Ornstein and Ornstein 1996). Before his encounter with self psychology, Ornstein wrote that a structure for the interpretative process is built from our sustained efforts at understanding a patient's conscious and unconscious mental life (Ornstein and Kalthoff 1967; Ornstein 1968). Ornstein, more than Kohut and other self psychologists, focused on the way the analyst and patient get to interpretations rather than on the contents of interpretations."[2]
Family
Although her deportation to Auschwitz separated them during the war, Paul and Anna found their way back to one another.[7] The two married in 1946. Before his passing, Paul and Anna were married for 71 years and raised three children, Sharone, Miriam, and Rafael, all of whom became psychiatrists.[1]
References
- ^ a b c d e Roberts, Sam (31 January 2017). "Paul Ornstein, 92, Psychoanalyst and Holocaust Survivor, Dies". New York Times. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
- ^ a b c d Halpern, Jeffrey K. (2019-03-04). "Paul H. Ornstein, MD (1924–2017)". The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 100 (2): 384–392. doi:10.1080/00207578.2019.1584857. ISSN 0020-7578.
- ^ a b Richman, Sophia (2017). "LOOKING BACK: MEMOIR OF A PSYCHOANALYST. By Paul Ornstein, with Helen Epstein". The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 86 (1): 198–211. doi:10.1002/psaq.12132. ISSN 2167-4086.
- ^ Cantrell, Cindy (16 February 2016). "From Budapest to Brookline, a psychoanalyst looks back". Boston Globe. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
- ^ a b "Anna Ornstein". Teach the Holocaust. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
- ^ a b "Meet the Author: Paul Ornstein "Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst" – VIDEO". BPSI.org. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
- ^ a b Lovettllovett@wickedlocal.com, Laura. "Journey of love and grit". The Concord Journal. Retrieved 2019-04-06.
- ^ Empathy. Lichtenstein Creative Media. ISBN 9781933644257.
- ^ Solomon, David (6 September 2016). "Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst (book review)". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. doi:10.1177/0003065116667286.
- ^ Weisel-Barth, J (July 2016). "What Is a Life Well Lived? A Review of Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst (book review)". International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology 11(3):293-299.