Edmund Bergler

Edmund Bergler (1899 - 1962), an Austrian Jew, fled the Nazis in 1937-38 to live and practice in New York City. He wrote 25 psychology books along with 273 articles that were published in leading professional journals.

Bergler's contribution to psychoanalytic thought was remarkable. Delos Smith, science editor of United Press International, said Bergler was "among the most prolific Freudian theoreticians after Freud himself."

He extended and made clinically usable several of Freud's later concepts, including

superego cruelty, unconscious masochism, and the importance of the pre-oedipal oral mother-attachment.

Hitschmann spoke of his "extraordinary talent for the specialty of psychoanalysis . . . his command of the entire subject matter, his scientific acumen and literary erudition." Considered "one of the few original minds among the followers of Freud," Bergler presented his main ideas in The Basic Neurosis, in which he summarized his massive original contribution to the field.

Throughout his considerable body of written work, lucid case summaries in each book reveal clinical brilliance and a highly effective analytic technique. His own writing, as well as productive collaborations with Jekels, Eidelberg, Winterstein, and Hitschmann,

included works on theory and technique.

Bergler was Freud’s assistant director at the Vienna clinic in the 1930s, and is among the first generation of psychoanalyists after Freud. The centerpiece of Freudian psychoanalysis was initially the Oedipus complex; but Bergler notes that, over time, Freud began to realize how important the pre-Oedipal phase was in human development- particularly the earliest- oral- phase.

Unfortunately, many of Freud’s (and Bergler’s) predecessors have not followed

their lead: (p. 57)* “One sometimes has the impression that some colleagues treat everything ‘beyond Oedipus and the libido’ as unwelcome and bothersome intruders.” and (p. 62): “Prevailing analytic opinion failed to accept that substructure de facto and relegated pre-oedipality to a footnote.” Bergler certainly didn’t. On the contrary, the pre-Oedipal phase was the central feature of his work. In this essay, we will attempt to outline why he considered the pre-Oedipal to be so important.

"Bergler, Edmund (1899-1962)." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. . Retrieved July 23, 2018 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/psycholog...

* Almost all material included (with the exception of the Appendix) are quotes from Bergler's "Curable and Incurable Neurotics" (1961).