Viktor Tausk
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Viktor Tausk (1879/1880, Zsolna/Žilina, Northern Hungary - July 3, 1919) was a pioneer psychoanalyst and neurologist. A student and a colleague of Sigmund Freud and the earliest exponent of psychoanalytical concepts with regard to clinical psychosis and the personality of the artist.
In 1919 after he had stepped out from Freud's shadow, Tausk published a paper on the origin of a delusion common to a wide array of schizophrenic patients, namely that an alien device, malignant and remote, had influenced their thoughts and their behaviour. This device was referred to as the Influencing Machine and the paper was called On the Origin of the ‘Influencing Machine’ in Schizophrenia. It is the most well known of his publications and it has reached outside of his own field of research into others, such as literary theory for example.
On the morning of July 3 1919 after Helene Deutsch had stopped Tausk’s treatment, Freud had demanded it, and after a complicated ménage à trois with Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé, Tausk committed suicide.
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Victor Tausk. Sexuality, War and Schizophrenia: Collected Psychoanalytic Papers (Philanthropy and Society) (1990) ISBN 0-88738-365-3
[edit] Books on Viktor Tausk
- Paul Roazen. Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk ISBN 0-8147-7395-8
- Kurt R. Eissler. Victor Tausk's Suicide (1983) ISBN 0-8236-6735-9
- Kurt R. Eissler. Talent and genius: The fictitious case of Tausk contra Freud (1971)ISBN 0-8021-0089-9
