Otto Gross, Freudian Psychoanalyst, 1877-1920 Literature and Ideas

Otto Gross was one of the most famous – and controversial – Freudian analysts of the first decade of the 20th century. Highly praised by Freud and also a patient and friend of C. H. Jung, he was rejected from the movement because he wanted to adapt psychoanalysis to function as a philosophy of revolution. He had a strong influence on other analysts and was a famous anarchist belonging to radical cultural groups. He was also the center of sexual scandals, for employing orgiastic forms of therapy, and for giving poison to deeply depressed women patients, who used it to commit suicide. His father, Hans Gross, was famous as the man who introduced criminology in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Father and son were close collaborators in Otto's early years, but later the father tried to get him confined in a mental institution, and finally had him examined by state doctors who declared him insane and incapable of managing his own affairs. His influence on his contemporaries included Max and Alfred Weber, Frieda von Richtofen (later Frieda Lawrence), and her sister Else, and the young Jewish writers of Prague, including Franz Werfel, Franz Kafka, and Max Brod.