Felix Deutsch—1884—1964

Dr Felix Deutsch died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 2 January, 1964. He had carried on the training of psycho-analytic candidates, his teaching, and his resarch until the last few months of his terminal illness in the 80th year of his life. His personality and his scientific contributions will continue to influence psycho-analysis and medicine for many years to come.

Born in Vienna, where he received his medical degree, he published 25 papers on medical research before he became a psycho-analyst and a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Beside his originality and his continuous productiveness, Deutsch had the patience and orderliness necessary to build up a comprehensive theoretical structure, based on the gradual accumulation of detailed clinical observations and on the refinement and elaboration of certain fundamental concepts, many of which were clearly indicated in his early papers between 1921 and 1939. More than 40 years ago he dealt quite explicitly with homeostatic balances, humoral influences, and the function of the vegetative nervous system as mechanisms available for the implementation of the conflicting forces observed during the process of psycho-analysis. From the very beginning he was fully aware of the all-pervasive effect within the organism resulting from the adaptive responses of the fully integrated total unit. His use of the psychosomatic concept contained no trace of dualism, and he described his integral view of personality as bioanalytical.

In his address to the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1933 on 'Studies in Pathogenesis', he pointed out that we are entitled to assume that any organic repercussion of a psychical incident that has occurred at any phase of development can be reawakened if the psychical experience which originally gave rise to it is revived. In his paper on the choice of organ in organ neurosis (1939) he broadened his concepts to include healthy function as well as illness and described a mutual interact