Theodor Reik was a prominent psychoanalyst who trained as one of Freud's first students in Vienna, Austria. Reik received a Ph.D. degree in psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 from the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

 in 1912. His dissertation, a study of Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony, was the first psychoanalytic dissertation ever written. After receiving his doctorate, Reik devoted several years to studying with Freud, who financially supported Reik and his family during his psychoanalytic training. During this time, Reik was analyzed by Karl Abraham

Karl Abraham

-Further reading:* Freud, S. . Mourning and Melancholia. Standard Edition, 14, 305-307.* May-Tolzmann, U. . The Discovery of the Bad Mother: Abraham’s contribution to the theory of Depression...

. Reik, who was Jewish, emigrated from Germany to Holland in 1934 and to the United States in 1938 in flight from Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Rejected from the dominant community of medical psychoanalysts in the United States because he did not possess an M.D. degree, Reik went on to found one of the first psychoanalytic training centers for psychologists, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis

National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis

The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis is an organization of psychoanalysts dedicated to the advancement of psychoanalysis as a science and a profession...

, which remains one of the largest and best-known psychoanalytic training institutes in New York City.

As part of Reik's conflict with the medical psychoanalysis community, he participated in the first lawsuit which helped define and legitimize the practice of psychoanalysis by non-physicians.

Reik is best known for psychoanalytic studies of psychotherapeutic listening, masochism, criminology

Criminology

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society...

, literature, and religion.

Reik's first major book was The Compulsion to Confess (1925), in which he argued that neurotic symptoms such as blushing and stuttering can be seen as unconscious

Unconscious mind

The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...

 confessions that express the patient's repressed

Repressed

"Repressed" is a single by Apocalyptica, released on May 19, 2006.-Track listing:# "Repressed" featuring Max Cavalera & Matt Tuck# "Path Vol.2" featuring Sandra Nasic# "Betrayal" # "Repressed"...

 impulses while also punishing the patient for communicating these impulses.

Reik further explored this theme in The Unknown Murderer (1932), in which he examined the process of psychologically profiling unknown criminals. He argued out that because of unconscious guilt, criminals often leave clues that can lead to their identification and arrest.

In Masochism in Modern Man (1941), Reik argues that patients who engage in self-punishing or provocative behavior do so in order to demonstrate their emotional fortitude, induce guilt in others, and achieve a sense of "victory through defeat."

Reik presented a forceful criticism of traditional Freudian theory in A Psychologist Looks at Love (1944). Freud had believed that love is always based on some form of sexual desire. Reik argued, to the contrary, that love and lust are distinct motivational forces.

In Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies (1946), he uses psychoanalysis to shed light on the meaning of couvade

Couvade

Couvade syndrome, also called sympathetic pregnancy or phantom pregnancy, is a condition in which a man experiences some of the same symptoms and behavior of an expectant mother. These most often include minor weight gain, altered hormone levels, morning nausea, and disturbed sleep patterns...

, puberty

Puberty

Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...

 rites, and the Jewish rituals of Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur , also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue...

 and shofar

Shofar

A shofar is a horn, traditionally that of a ram, used for Jewish religious purposes. Shofar-blowing is incorporated in synagogue services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.Shofar come in a variety of sizes.- Bible and rabbinic literature :...

.

Reik's most famous book, Listening with the Third Ear (1948), describes how psychoanalysts intuitively use their own unconscious minds to detect and decipher the unconscious wishes and fantasies of their patients. According to Reik, analysts come to understand patients most deeply by examining their own unconscious intuitions about their patients.

In his psychoanalytic autobiography Fragments of a Great Confession (1949), Reik turned a psychoanalytic ear toward his own life, interpreting his inner conflicts and their influence on his writing and relationships.

The Secret Self (1952) comprises a number of essays of psychoanalytic literary criticism, in which Reik tried to decipher the unconscious fantasies and impulses lying beneath literary works. In this book, Reik continued to develop his interest in the relationship between his own personality and his work, exploring how his internal conflicts shaped his interpretations of literary works.

In Myth and Guilt (1957), Reik investigated the role of guilt and masochism in religion.

In "The Creation of Woman" Reik investigated and analyzed the second story of the creation of Eve in Genesis from Adam's rib. He supported his conclusion that the genders were reversed. It's not Eve that's born from his rib, it's the second birth of Adam into the world of men, leaving the world of the mother. His book "Ritual" contains evidence to support how secret keeping and 'initiation rites' in native societies in modern times are about leaving the world of the feminine, entering the masculine world.

Reik's theories were a strong influence on the French psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

, and anticipated recent developments in US psychoanalysis, such as its current emphasis on intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced but by more than one subject....

 and countertransference

Countertransference

Countertransferenceis defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.-Early formulations:...

. Reik's legacy for nonmedical psychoanalysis in the US is equally important. The training of nonmedical analysts, such as psychologists and social workers, is now largely accepted, partly because of Reik's efforts. It is also worth mentioning that the philosopher Frank P. Ramsey

Frank P. Ramsey

Frank Plumpton Ramsey was a British mathematician who, in addition to mathematics, made significant and precocious contributions in philosophy and economics before his death at the age of 26...

 was his patient, during a prolonged stay in Vienna with that purpose.

Publications

• 1912 – Flaubert und seine "Versuchung des heiligen Antonius". Doctoral thesis, University of Vienna.
• 1923 – Der eigene und der fremde Gott. Neuausgabe: Der eigene und der fremde Gott: zur Psychoanalyse d. religiösen Entwicklung, Mit e. Vorw. z. Neuausg. von Alexander Mitscherlich, Frankfurt (am Main): Suhrkamp, 1975.
• 1925/1959 – The Compulsion to Confess. In J. Farrar (Ed) The compulsion to confess and the need for punishment. (pp. 176–356). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.
• 1932/1959 – The Unknown Murderer. In J. Farrar (Ed) The compulsion to confess and the need for punishment. (pp. 3–173). New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy.
• 1937 – Surprise and the Psycho-Analyst: On the Conjecture and Comprehension of Unconscious Process. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
• 1941 – Masochism In Modern Man. New York: Toronto, Farrar & Rinehart.
• 1944/1974 – A Psychologist Looks at Love. In M. Sherman (Ed.) Of Love and Lust. (pp. 1–194). New York: Jason Aronson
  Jason Aronson
  Jason Aronson is an American publisher of books in the field of psychotherapy. Topics dealt with in these books include child therapy, family therapy, couple therapy, object relations therapy, play therapy, depression, eating disorders, personality disorders, substance abuse, sexual abuse, stress,...
  
  .
• 1946 – Ritual: Four Psychoanalytic Studies". 1962 Grove Press edition.
• 1948 – Listening with the Third Ear: The inner experience of a psychoanalyst. New York: Grove Press.
• 1952 – The Secret Self. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
• 1953 – The Haunting Melody: Psychoanalytic Experiences in Life and Music. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young.
• 1957 – Myth and Guilt. New York: George Braziller.
• 1959 – Mystery on the Mountain: The Drama of the Sinai Revelation. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
• 1960 – The Creation of Woman: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the Myth of Eve. New York: George Braziller.
• 1961 – The Temptation. New York: George Braziller.
• 1962 – Jewish Wit. New York: Gamut Press.
• 1963 - The Need To Be Loved. New York: H Wolff.
• 1964 – Voices From the Inaudible: The Patients Speak. New York: Farrar, Straus and Company.

External links

• A summary and critique of Reik's 1946 article on shofar can be found in Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn, Volume Three http://www.hearingshofar.com/Book3.htm
• Reik, Theodor in International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis