MARCINOWSKI, JOHANNES (JAROSLAW) (1868-1935)

Johannes (Jaroslaw) Marcinowski, a German neurologist, was born in Breslau, Poland, on November 13, 1868, and died in Tübingen-Waldhausen, Germany, on February 13, 1935.

He was the son of Johanna and Johann Gottlieb Marcinowski; his father was an administrative councilor. He attended a cadet training college and graduated as an officer. He was wounded in the course of his military career and subsequently devoted himself to medical studies, graduating from the University of Breslau as a doctor of medicine in 1894. From 1901 onward he worked as a neurologist in different treatment centers and in 1907 he founded his own center (Haus Sielbeck bei Eutin, in the province of Holstein).

Carl Gustav Jung drew Freud's attention to one of his papers. Freud responded: "Today I received a charming letter from Marcinowski, in which he declares himself to be our staunch supporter and comrade in struggle. He tells me that three further papers are being published in various places. He is trying to make contact with our group and is asking for addresses" (Freud and Jung, 1974a [1906-1913], p. 231).

Freud mentions Marcinowski's rest home in On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1914d) as the first German institution to open its doors to psychoanalysis. At the second psychoanalytic Congress, held in Nuremberg in 1910, Marcinowski gave a conference on Sejunktive Prozesse als Grundlage der Psychoneurosen (Sejunctive processes as the foundation of the psychoneuroses). In the fall of 1911 he was appointed a permanent collaborator of the Zentralblatt für Psycho-analyse as well as the Internationale Zeitschrift für (ärtzliche) Psychoanalyse from 1913 to 1919. He was a member of the regional Berlin group affiliated to the International Psychoanalytical Association from 1912, and remained a member until he was admitted to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1919.

After World War I he acquired a farm at Heilbrunn bei Bad-Tölz in Upper Bavaria and transformed it into a clinic, which he directed until 1928. In 1919 he became a member of the Leonhard Seif's society: Gesellschaft für angewandte Seelenkunde (Society for applied psychology) in Munich. He resigned one year later along with psychoanalysts Hans von Hattingberg and Viktor von Gebsattel because Seif, who was already close to Adler and then Jung, was moving too far away from Freudian concepts.

Marcinowski developed his own form of psychotherapy and from the mid-1920s he can no longer be classified in any given sector. He gave conferences on psychoanalysis in the context of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für medizinische Psychologie (Study group for medical psychology) founded by Carl Gustav Heyer at the University of Munich in 1925. He published in Hans von Hattingberg's collection Der nervöse Mensch (The nervous man), collaborated in the Zeitschrift für Menschenkunde (Review of anthropology) founded by Hattingberg in 1925, in Wilhelm Stekel's publications, and in other medical and psychotherapeutic reviews. He died on February 13, 1935, in Tübingen-Waldhausen, where he had lived with his family since 1928 and where he had opened another rest home, which his wife continued to run after his death.

Elke MÜhlleitner

See also: Germany.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1914d). On the history of the psychoanalytic movement. SE, 14: 1-66.

Freud, Sigmund and Jung, Carl Gustav (1974a). The Freud/Jung letters: The correspondence between Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. (William McGuire Ed., Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Marcinowski, Johannes. (1904). Im Kampf um gesunde Nerven. Ein Wegweiser zum Verständnis und zur Heilung nervöser Zustände. Berlin: O. Salle.

——. (1905). Nervosität und Weltanschauung. Studien zur seelischen Behandlung Nervöser nebst einer kurzen Theorie vom Wollen und Können. Berlin: O. Salle.

——. (1916). Neue Bahnen zur Heilung nervöser Zustände. Ein Stück Lebenskunst für alle. Berlin: O. Salle.

Mühlleitner, Elke. (1992). Biographisches Lexikon der Psycho-analyse (Die Mitglieder der Psychologischen Mittwoch-Gesellschaft und der Wiener Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung 1902-1938). Tübingen: Diskord.