SCHIFF, PAUL (1891-1947)

Paul Schiff—French physician, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and neuropsychiatrist known for his work with prisoners—was born in Vienna on August 5, 1891, and died in Paris on May 17, 1947.

Though Austrian by birth, Schiff was culturally French. His father, a foreign correspondent for an Austrian newspaper, settled in Paris when his son was a month old. At the Collège de France, Schiff studied philosophy and was especially influenced by Henri Bergson's lectures on Spinoza (1632-1677). He subsequently studied medicine. During World War I, Schiff, not a French citizen but unwilling to fight in the Austrian army, moved to Switzerland, where he became friends with the novelist Romain Rolland and the poet Pierre-Jean Jouve. Returning to France, he interned in psychiatry at the Asiles de la Seine (Asylums of the Seine) and later served as chief of the psychiatric clinic at Sainte-Anne Hospital in 1927. He married Suzanne Wertheimer, an ophthalmologist.

Analyzed by Eugénie Sokolnicka, Schiff became a member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society) in 1928. He was also a founding member ofÉvolution psychiatrique, a medical organization for French psychoanalysts. He worked withÉdouard Toulouse at the Henri-Rousselle Pavilion, where he directed a clinic for sex-related disorders until 1936.

Increasingly drawn to criminology, Schiff was appointed neuropsychiatrist of prisons in 1935. The same year, at the Ninth Conference of French-Speaking Psychoanalysts, he presented the paper "Psychoanalysis and the Paranoias." In his work on criminality, Schiff established an intellectual foundation for cross-disciplinary research employing a range of different perspectives, including the biological bases of behavior and the role of unconscious conflict. But World War II intruded, and his projected treatise on criminology remained unpublished. In 1938, with Daniel Lagache and others, Schiff founded the publication Psychologie Collective (Collective psychology), which terminated with the war.

Schiff enlisted as a battalion physician before returning to Paris after the 1940 defeat of the French forces. He and his wife both entered the Resistance and then joined the Free French in Algeria; he was later taken prisoner in Germany. Back in Paris after the end of the war, he immediately returned to his work with prisoners, published actively, but suddenly died of a stroke just two years later.

Claire Doz-Schiff

See also: Congrès des psychanalystes de langue française des pays romans; Criminology and psychoanalysis; France; Société psychanalytique de Paris and Institut de psychanalyse de Paris; Second World War: The effect on the development of psychoanalysis.

Bibliography

Mijolla, Alain de. (1988). Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts in France between 1939 and 1945. International Forum for Psychoanalysis, 12, 136-156.

Schiff, Paul. (1935). Les paranoïas et la psychanalyse. Revue française de psychanalyse, 8, 44-105.

——. (1946). La paranoïa de destruction: Réaction de Samson et fantasme de la fin du monde, séance du 25 mars 1946. Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 1, 3, 279-289.

Schiff, Paul, and Antheaume, André. (1925, July). La psychanalyse envisagée du point de vue de quelques applications médico-légales. Encéphale (July 1925): 400.