Ernst Simmel

Ernst Simmel (German: [ˈzɪməl]; 4 April 1882, Breslau – 11 November 1947, Los Angeles) was a German-Jewish neurologist and psychoanalyst.

Born in Breslau (Wrocław), Silesia to a secular Jewish background, Simmel moved to Berlin as a child. He studied medicine and psychiatry in Berlin and . He graduated in medicine in 1908, with a dissertation on dementia praecox. In 1910 he married Alice Seckelson. In 1913 he helped found the Society of Socialist Physicians (VSÄ), and became one of the pioneers of Social Medicine.

During World War I he headed a hospital for psychiatric casualties of war in Posen; self-taught in psychoanalysis, he introduced the use of psychodynamic categories there. His pioneering work on the treatment of war neurosis with psychoanalytic methods drew him to the attention of Sigmund Freud, who would build explicitly on his work in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921).

After the war, Simmel received a training analysis with Karl Abraham — another leading analyst who rated the serious young physician very highly — and himself provided the writer Alfred Döblin with training analysis. Simmel helped Abraham and Max Eitingon found the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920, the world's first psychoanalytic clinic providing free analytic help for indigent patients: between 1920 and 1930, 1,955 consultations took place there, 721 resulting in some form of psychoanalysis. Simmel had played a model role in the institution by insisting from the start on confidentiality and equal treatment for non-paying as for paying analysands.

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