Today we present a brief biography of Félix Boehm, whose name appears several times in the history of psychoanalysis, however, his notoriety is not due to the contributions he made to this discipline, which, in fact, were very few. famous was that he became one of the most iconic figures of what became the tragic decade of psychoanalysis.
It was a period of contradictions and ambiguities, this happened when National Socialism came to power and proscribed Jewish psychoanalysts, who were majority at the time; Nazism was divided between the conceptual validity of this current and the fact that its core was made up of Jews.
- ?« Considered by defenders of National Socialism as a “Jewish science”.
- Psychoanalysis has suffered.
- For more than ten years.
- A series of setbacks that have led many of its followers into exile.
- Prison.
- Torture or death.
- “- Iturbide and Sánchez de Miguel-.
The same has happened with many psychoanalysts. They saw the need to preserve psychoanalysis, but at the same time, they had to reconcile it with Nazism. Felix Boehm was the mainstay of this contradiction. Together with Werner Kemper, Harald Schultz-Hencke and Carl Muller-Braunschweig, he was one of the psychoanalysts who decided to collaborate with the Nazi regime.
Felix Boehm was born on June 25, 1881 in Riga, Germany. He studied in Switzerland and graduated from high school in 1906. He then studied mechanical engineering at Riga Polytechnic. By then, he had become familiar with psychoanalysis. In 1901, he read the psychopathology of Sigmund Freud’s daily life and has since become interested in the subject.
In 1912 he began his medical studies at the University of Geneva, however, he graduated from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, where he had the opportunity to work with Emil Kraepelin, considered the father of modern psychiatry, a specialist in psychiatry and neurology. .
Felix Boehm was first psychoanalyzed by Eugenie Sokolnicka, then did a brief training analysis with Freud; later, he resumed his psychoanalysis with Karl Abraham, whom he met in Berlin, married twice, the first in 1904 and the second in 1914. two daughters, and both were analyzed by the prestigious Melanie Klein.
Felix Boehm joined the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) in 1922. At the time, he was in a scandal accusing him of embezzlement of college scholarship funds.
With the rise to power of Nazism, DPG took the necessary measures to prevent the prohibition of the teaching of psychoanalysis, so the institution has drawn up a statement of principles that essentially refers to the principles of the Nazi regime.
Similarly, DPG forced Jewish analysts to resign and expelled left-wing activists. In addition, he broke up with the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). Felix Boehm was behind all these actions.
Boehm has openly declared his commitment to National Socialism, but he was not alone. So have prestigious psychoanalysts, such as Carl Gustav Jung or Ernest Jones, whose central goal, or perhaps that of many psychoanalysts of the time, was to preserve the practice of psychoanalysis in Germany.
For a long time, Boehm was interested in the study of homosexuality. During the Nazi era, the DPG was renamed “Working Group A” and operated under the tutelage of the German Institute of Psychological Research and Psychotherapy. There, Boehm continued his research and after a while, he was appointed specialist in homosexuality.
Felix Boehm himself asked the Reich to take the necessary surveillance measures on homosexuality and to help enable an “early diagnosis” of homosexuality. Nazi politics was not to diagnose homosexuals, but to persecute, sterilize and/or exterminate them. Boehm said his proposal was a way to protect this population, however, years later, several death sentences came out of his writings.
After the end of the war, Boehm showed no signs of regret for what happened. A Freudian envoy, who sought to assess the competence of German psychoanalysts to carry out their role, claimed that Felix Boehm was mentally unfit for this purpose. , Boehm remained a member of the DPG until his death on December 20, 1958 in Berlin.