Paul Federn
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Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 - May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. After earning his doctorate in 1895, he was an assistant in general medicine under Hermann Nothnagel in Vienna. It was Nothnagel who introduced Federn to the works of Sigmund Freud. Federn was deeply influenced by Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, and in 1904 became devoted to the field of psychoanalysis. Along with Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel, Federn was an early, important follower of Freud. In 1924 he became an official representative of Freud, as well as vice president of the Vienna Society. In 1938 Federn emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, however it wouldn't be until 1946 that he would be officially recognized as a training analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1950, Paul Federn committed suicide following a recurrence of what he believed was incurable cancer.
Federn is mostly remembered for his theories regarding ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis. Although an ardent supporter of Freud's teachings, Federn's concept of the ego as experience coinciding with "ego feeling" was inconsistent with Freud's structural approach. In the late 1920s, Federn published treatises such as Some Variations in Ego-Feeling and Narcissism in the Structure of the Ego, and during this time-period his ideas concerning "ego states", "ego boundaries", "ego cathexis" and the median nature of narcissism are brought forth.
Federn advocated an unorthodox approach concerning analysis of psychosis. He believed that a patients' attempt at integration should involve strengthening his defenses, while at the same time avoiding repressed material. He also believed that transference concerning psychosis should not be analyzed, and that negative transference should be avoided. In regards to schizophrenic patients, he believed that their egos possessed insufficient cathectic energy, and that it was a lack rather than an excess of narcissistic libido that caused a psychotic individuals' difficulties with the object.
Federn was also interested in social psychology. In an early 1919 work of his titled Zur Psychologie der Revolution, he explains the challenge to authority by the post-World War I generation as unconscious parricide whose goal is to create a "fatherless society".
Although Federn's psychoanalytical theories had limited influence, he had several important followers in Europe and America.
