Wilhelm Stekel
| Wilhelm Stekel | |
|---|---|
Wilhelm Stekel
|
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| Born |
March 18, 1868 Boiany, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary (present day Ukraine) |
| Died | June 25, 1940 (aged 72) London, England |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Occupation |
Psychoanalyst Psychologist |
| Known for | Auto-erotism: A Psychiatric Study of Onanism and Neurosis |
| Spouse(s) | Hilda Binder Stekel |
Wilhelm Stekel (German: [ˈʃteːkəl]; March 18, 1868 – June 25, 1940) was an Austrian physician and psychologist, who became one of Sigmund Freud's earliest followers, and was once described as "Freud's most distinguished pupil". According to Ernest Jones, "Stekel may be accorded the honour, together with Freud, of having founded the first psycho-analytic society"; while he also described him as "a naturally gifted psychologist with an unusual flair for detecting repressed material." He later had a falling-out with Freud, who announced in November 1912 that "Stekel is going his own way". His works are translated and published in many languages.
Born in Boiany, Bukovina, he wrote a book called Auto-erotism: A Psychiatric Study of Onanism and Neurosis, first published in English in 1950. He is also credited with coining the term paraphilia to replace perversion. He analysed, among others, the psychoanalysts Otto Gross and A. S. Neill, as well as Freud's first biographer, Fritz Wittels. The latter paid tribute to "his strange ease in understanding", but commented that "The trouble with Stekel's analysis was that it almost invariably reached an impasse when the so-called negative transference grew stronger". His autobiography was published in 1950.
Stekel made significant contributions to symbolism in dreams, "as successive editions of The Interpretation of Dreams attest, with their explicit acknowledgement of Freud's debt to Stekel": "the works of Wilhelm Stekel and others...since taught me to form a truer estimate of the extent and importance of symbolism in dreams".
Considering obsessional doubts, Stekel said,
In anxiety the libido is transformed into organic and somatic symptoms; in doubt, the libido is transformed into intellectual symptoms. The more intellectual someone is, the greater will be the doubt component of the transformed forces. Doubt becomes pleasure sublimated as intellectual achievement.
Stekel wrote one of a set of three early "Psychoanalytic studies of psychical impotence" referred to approvingly by Freud: "Freud had written a preface to Stekel's book". Related to this may be Stekel's "elaboration of the idea that everyone, and in particular neurotics, has a peculiar form of sexual gratification which is alone adequate".
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