Franz Alexander—1891-1964

When a member of that loosely knit group to which we often refer as "the second generation of psychoanalysts" passes away, we stand in silent reverence. Stunned by the inevitability of death, or grieved by the personal loss of a friend, we accomplish our mourning by collecting our memories, reviewing our experiences; we attempt to appraise the man and the scientist to attribute to him his place in the history of psychoanalysis. For most members of that group played significant roles in the development, expansion, and diffusion of psychoanalysis. This is eminently true of Franz Alexander.

He was born in Budapest at the fin du siècle, at a period when culture was nurtured by security and children were raised by mothers who were taken for granted and fathers who represented the "ideal" of man. In such an atmosphere did Alexander acquire his indomitable optimism which sustained his buoyancy. His father, Bernard, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Budapest, an illustrious Shakespearean scholar who conveyed to his son a deep respect for the power of the intellect. The son responded with eager curiosity and an unquenchable thirst for learning. He early became an avid reader in diversified fields and remained so throughout his life.

Alexander had an intuitive feeling for the change in scientific atmosphere. In spite of his exclusively humanistic education, he sensed the "on-march" of natural sciences overreaching the humanistic trends. Instead of following in his father's footsteps, he decided to study medicine and received his medical degree in 1912. For the following three years he worked in the Institute of Experimental Pathology where he published three experimental studies on the metabolism of the brain. After World War I, during which he functioned as bacteriologist combating malaria on the Italian front, he joined the psychiatric department of the University of Budapest, primarily to continue his research in brain physiology. But the work in