Siegfried Bernfeld 1892–1953

At the turn of this century a growing group of educational reformers with strong liberal leanings made themselves felt in Central Europe. They dimly sensed the approaching disaster and tried to ward it off by more enlightened education, more social justice, and better psychological insight into the needs of the coming generations. In this movement Gustav Wynecken was an outstanding figure. Impressed and stimulated by the English Public School system, he founded the Landerziehungsheim Wickersdorf, where he tried to uproot the usual authoritarian school system and give life and reality to the cultural and democratic ideals of the progressive intellectuals in Imperial Germany. Co-education and the sharing of administrative responsibilities between teachers and pupils were among the novel features of Wickersdorf.

In his foreword to Kinderheim Baumgarten Bernfeld names Maria Montessori, Berthold Otto and Gustav Wynecken as the educators whose ideas he tried to synthesize in his own experiment with new forms of education. More will be said about Kinderheim Baumgarten in its proper chronological place, since the experience which Bernfeld gained in connexion with this experiment marks a turning-point in his emotional and intellectual development.

Bernfeld was a prolific writer, and his first paper was written when he was eighteen, an undergraduate at the University of Vienna. Biology and psychology attracted him from the start. A review of William Stern's Psychological Methods of Intelligence Tests and their Application to School Children was his first publication. In the following year came his first paper in the 'Zeitschrift' (Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse) on 'Unconscious Determination of the Thinking Process. A Self-Observation'. 'Psycho-analysis and Psychology' followed next year in the same journal, to mention only the psycho-analytically oriented papers of the years preceding World War I.

The bibliography of Bernfeld's writings at the end of thi