IN
MEMOHIA\i
Erwin W. Straus 1891-1975
LAST SPRING we were saddened at the news of the death of Erwin Straus on May 20 at the age of 83. Today we reflect on the fullness and richness of a magnificently productive life that was lived vigorously on two continents and that taught three generations of students the meaning of the human in the science and art of psychiatry. In the United States Dr. Straus stood for the best in phenomenological psychology and existential psychiatry. His creden-
tials
were
impressive,
his
missionary
zeal
undaunted.
From
his
are: On Obsession ( 1948); The Primary World of the Senses (1963, German original 1935); Psychologie der Menschlichen Welt (1960), and Phenomenological Psychology (1966). He remained a man of two cultures, two languages, a seer within two worlds. If Erwin Straus had a specialty, it was probably the practice of wonderment. His seeking the sense of the senses and the depths of meaning in ordinary things were his way of approaching
clinical
later life outpost in Lexington, Ky., at the Veterans Administration Hospital, his influence circled out across the country and back to Europe, where he had his beginnings in German academic medicine. These past two decades he was a tireless traveler and lecturer in Louisville, Washington, Santa Cruz, Pittsburgh, Wurzburg, Kreuzlingen, Louvain, and Heidelberg. He was born in Frankfurt and spoke the idiom of his native
sions,
city
insightful
all
his
life.
After
education
in Swiss
and
German
universi-
ties and army service during World War I, he graduated in medicine from Berlin in 1919. It was there, at the Charitd Hospital, where Erwin grew to prominence in both neurology and psychiatry under the beloved chief Karl Bonhoeffer. In the l920s and 30s he was an active teacher, writer, editor, and practitioner,
parts
he was
to play
again
in later
life.
Sometime in the 1920s Dr. Straus discovered the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and took it into himself, with all his fine intelligence and penetrating observation. He allied himself with similarly inclined clinicians: Ludwig Binswanger. V. E. von Gebsattel, Juergen Zutt, and Eugene Minkowski. With others they formed a loosely organized circle of psychiatrists dedicated to a program of radical description and elucidation along existential lines. They stood apart from the Kraepelinian old guard and the Freudian psychoanalysts. and they laid the foundations for post World War II psychiatry in Europe. The Americanization of Erwin Straus took place, not altogether painlessly, at Black Mountain College, NC., from 1938 to 1944. He taught psychology and philosophy at this remarkable institution of the educational avant-garde, surrounded by other refugees including Bauhaus artists like his friend Josef Albers. Black Mountain showed Dr. Straus the pioneer spirit and the communal frontier, which his German colleagues would not be likely to find in Boston or New York. After 1944 it was clinical psychiatry, research, and writing once more, first at Johns Hopkins and then at Lexington. Some of the books he wrote
I2 I
A m J Psychiau
132’! 1. November
1975
and
the
theoretical
sigh,
man’s
problems
upright
hallucinations,
posture,
the
He liked to stand before some taken-for-granted and by examining appearances show us mysteries, teach us the humanizing claims of our sensing sensibility.
In
psychiatry
and
this
enterprise
claimed
and profound.
an
he
We will remember
humor.
his deep-toned cello in chamber music Kentucky. Honors came to him late
played in life
served
he
--but
also
friendship
science
of
uncompromising
his sparkling his
sooner
will
basic
was
of time.
aspect of life or better still and embodied
the
that
remember
them
We
enriched
objectivity
obses-
experience
intelligence love
of
and
music
and
among friends in although he de-
always
had
in
abun-
dance, the giving and the taking of it, so tactfully balanced between distance and closeness and wonderfully expressing his phenomenologist’s knack for encounter. His extraordinary gift was his sensitivity to the everyday primary world ofexpenience, whether he was making a critique of perception in physiological psychology or walking with a companion.
He
would
be able
to
show
by
word
and
gesture
that
we
an objective space and a lived space, and he never tired of discoursing upon the differences between geography and landscape, environment and world, abstract space and a specifically human space where we are. In the title of one of his own papers, he provides us with a concise epitaph. The title was drawn from the end of Goethe’s Faust; the watchman on the towers speaks of himself: inhabit
Zum Sehen geboren, Zum Schauen bestellt Born to see, Obliged to behold ...
. .
Lui’lE JAMES
JISSNER,
L. Foy,
M.D. M.D.
MEMOHIA\i
Erwin W. Straus 1891-1975
LAST SPRING we were saddened at the news of the death of Erwin Straus on May 20 at the age of 83. Today we reflect on the fullness and richness of a magnificently productive life that was lived vigorously on two continents and that taught three generations of students the meaning of the human in the science and art of psychiatry. In the United States Dr. Straus stood for the best in phenomenological psychology and existential psychiatry. His creden-
tials
were
impressive,
his
missionary
zeal
undaunted.
From
his
are: On Obsession ( 1948); The Primary World of the Senses (1963, German original 1935); Psychologie der Menschlichen Welt (1960), and Phenomenological Psychology (1966). He remained a man of two cultures, two languages, a seer within two worlds. If Erwin Straus had a specialty, it was probably the practice of wonderment. His seeking the sense of the senses and the depths of meaning in ordinary things were his way of approaching
clinical
later life outpost in Lexington, Ky., at the Veterans Administration Hospital, his influence circled out across the country and back to Europe, where he had his beginnings in German academic medicine. These past two decades he was a tireless traveler and lecturer in Louisville, Washington, Santa Cruz, Pittsburgh, Wurzburg, Kreuzlingen, Louvain, and Heidelberg. He was born in Frankfurt and spoke the idiom of his native
sions,
city
insightful
all
his
life.
After
education
in Swiss
and
German
universi-
ties and army service during World War I, he graduated in medicine from Berlin in 1919. It was there, at the Charitd Hospital, where Erwin grew to prominence in both neurology and psychiatry under the beloved chief Karl Bonhoeffer. In the l920s and 30s he was an active teacher, writer, editor, and practitioner,
parts
he was
to play
again
in later
life.
Sometime in the 1920s Dr. Straus discovered the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and took it into himself, with all his fine intelligence and penetrating observation. He allied himself with similarly inclined clinicians: Ludwig Binswanger. V. E. von Gebsattel, Juergen Zutt, and Eugene Minkowski. With others they formed a loosely organized circle of psychiatrists dedicated to a program of radical description and elucidation along existential lines. They stood apart from the Kraepelinian old guard and the Freudian psychoanalysts. and they laid the foundations for post World War II psychiatry in Europe. The Americanization of Erwin Straus took place, not altogether painlessly, at Black Mountain College, NC., from 1938 to 1944. He taught psychology and philosophy at this remarkable institution of the educational avant-garde, surrounded by other refugees including Bauhaus artists like his friend Josef Albers. Black Mountain showed Dr. Straus the pioneer spirit and the communal frontier, which his German colleagues would not be likely to find in Boston or New York. After 1944 it was clinical psychiatry, research, and writing once more, first at Johns Hopkins and then at Lexington. Some of the books he wrote
I2 I
A m J Psychiau
132’! 1. November
1975
and
the
theoretical
sigh,
man’s
problems
upright
hallucinations,
posture,
the
He liked to stand before some taken-for-granted and by examining appearances show us mysteries, teach us the humanizing claims of our sensing sensibility.
In
psychiatry
and
this
enterprise
claimed
and profound.
an
he
We will remember
humor.
his deep-toned cello in chamber music Kentucky. Honors came to him late
played in life
served
he
--but
also
friendship
science
of
uncompromising
his sparkling his
sooner
will
basic
was
of time.
aspect of life or better still and embodied
the
that
remember
them
We
enriched
objectivity
obses-
experience
intelligence love
of
and
music
and
among friends in although he de-
always
had
in
abun-
dance, the giving and the taking of it, so tactfully balanced between distance and closeness and wonderfully expressing his phenomenologist’s knack for encounter. His extraordinary gift was his sensitivity to the everyday primary world ofexpenience, whether he was making a critique of perception in physiological psychology or walking with a companion.
He
would
be able
to
show
by
word
and
gesture
that
we
an objective space and a lived space, and he never tired of discoursing upon the differences between geography and landscape, environment and world, abstract space and a specifically human space where we are. In the title of one of his own papers, he provides us with a concise epitaph. The title was drawn from the end of Goethe’s Faust; the watchman on the towers speaks of himself: inhabit
Zum Sehen geboren, Zum Schauen bestellt Born to see, Obliged to behold ...
. .
Lui’lE JAMES
JISSNER,
L. Foy,
M.D. M.D.
