Alexander Mitscherlich

Alexander Mitscherlich (1908–1982) was a German psychoanalyst, physician, and writer. After studying the humanities and being arrested for political activities under the Nazi regime, he studied medicine in Zurich and Heidelberg. In 1946–47, he attended the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial as an observer and reporter. In 1949, he founded a department of psychosomatic medicine at Heidelberg University. From 1960 to 1976, he directed the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main, which he had founded. His best-known works include *Society Without the Father*, *Illness as Conflict*, and, with Margarete Mitscherlich-Nielsen, *The Inability to Mourn*. He received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1969 and died in Frankfurt am Main in 1982.