Im Getümmel der Welt

Alexander Mitscherlich, who would have turned 100 in September 2008, was one of the most distinctive personalities to put his stamp on the intellectual countenance of the German Republic in Bonn. Both as physician and scientist he played a decisive role in institutionalizing psychosomatics and psychoanalysis in the years following World War II. As a writer he became well known through his books “Medicine Without Humanity,” “On the Path to a Fatherless Society,” “The Inhospitality of Our Cities,” and “The Inability to Mourn.” As a public intellectual he developed from being a child of the antidemocratic Weimar Republic to one of the most vociferous democrats in the new Republic who passionately spoke on the burning problems of the new era. Timo Hoyer traces the career of Germany’s best-known psychoanalyst from his childhood to his death in 1982. This portrait of Mitscherlich’s intellectual development, his scientific influence as well as his social engagement is a portrait of the entire epoch as well. This biography contains many sources and illustrations published for the first time.