Institute for Transcultural and Historical Research

The Institute for Transcultural and Historical Research deals with:

inter- and transcultural as well as postcolonial issues
Focal points: ethnopsychoanalysis, migration, globalisation
the history of mentalities, cultural studies and philosophical foundations of psychotherapy science
Focal points: Annales School, radical enlightenment, prejudice studies
the history of psychotherapy
Focal points: expulsion of Jewish psychoanalysts from Vienna and Berlin 1933 – 1938; post-war history of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Austria (working title of the planned research project: “Psychoanalysis as Memory Work”).

Furthermore, the Institute is working on the scientific evaluation of the estate of the co-founder of ethnopsychoanalysis Paul Parin (died in 2009), in close cooperation with the “Studio and Archive Paul Parin and Goldy Parin-Matthèy”, which is also located at Sigmund Freud Private University.

Head: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Steiner, e-mail

Events

Jour fixe of the Institute for Transcultural and Historical Research

Information available soon…

Past Jour fixe

SS 2024:

WS 2023/24:

WS 2022/23:

Surrealist Automatism, World War I, and Psychoanalysis

WS 2019/20 and SS 2020:

WS 2018/19 and SS 2019:

SS 2018:

More past events:

Field Trips

Field trips for Psychotherapy Science students
Since 2013, excursions have been organised for SFU students. The enrichment that getting in touch with people of another culture can represent was formulated as follows by the pioneers of German-speaking ethnopsychoanalysis, Paul Parin, Goldy Parin-Matthèy and Fritz Morgenthaler:

“As psychoanalysts we have become freer and bolder because of living experience with Africans, better able to respond to the social relations of our analysands in Europe, and less inclined to regard behaviour that deviates from our own as pathological. This has also had an effect on our theoretical views.” Parin/Morgenthaler/Parin-Matthèy 1993c, p.18, cf. http://paul-parin.info.pdf

Selected Research Projects

Psychoanalysis in Austria – in the shadow of the Shoah

Starting from the fact that the Shoah caused a dramatic break in the theoretical, clinical and institutional development of psychoanalysis in Austria, the aim of this project is to work out how this break still affects psychoanalytic discourse in Austria today and to what extent it is (not) remembered in psychoanalytic institutions.

On the one hand, the forced flight of Jewish psychoanalysts in the 1930s and its consequences will be analysed and, on the other hand, the psychoanalysis of the post-war period up to its current situation in Austria will be examined with regard to this question. The project aims to make a contribution to remembrance work in one subject area.