The image of man in psychotherapy

Abstract

Ernst Kretschmer, the pioneer in the study of the relationship between body structure and character, in a letter to Karen Horney in which he invited her to join the editorial board of the Zeitschrift fur Psychotherapie, wrote: "Your ideas are in full agreement with my own views on psychotherapy which you know from my book Psychotherapeutische Studien. I wholly sympathize not only with your broadminded, undogmatic view of the manifold paths of psychotherapy--so rarely found today--but also particularly with such concepts as "'curative psychic forces," and "self-realization." Ernst Kretschmer is professor of psychiatry and director of the Neuropsychiatric Department of Ti~bingen University, He is president of the Allgemeine Aerztliche Gesellschaft ffir Psychotherapie. Among his numerous books are Der sensitive Beziehungswahn, KOrperbau und Character (Body Structure and Character), Medizinische Psychologie, Geniale Menschen (The Personality of Men of Genius), and Hysterie, Reflex und Instinkt, Psychotherapeutische Studien. The following article, chapter 8 of Dr. Kretschmer's Psychotherapeutische Studien, is published here with the kind permission of the author and the publisher, Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart. It was translated by Heinz and Ruth Norden.