Introductory Comments on 'Menschen Kenntnis'1

About the tremendous contributions of Freud and analysis to the knowledge of men there is no doubt. Still, Freud himself did not consider himself a good 'Menschen Kenner'. Ernest Jones and Hanns Sachs agreed that he was right. Kurt Eissler (1965) quotes psychological insights of Freud from pre-analytic times and also shows that in the same years he did strive for Menschen Kenntnis in the usual sense, outside of analysis. Anna Freud (1936) speaks in a sense similar to Freud's, not just about him but about psychoanalysts in general. Many have considered what he thought about his not being a Menschen Kenner just a bon mot. But we should not take things too easily. There is a real problem in what we have just discussed: a problem that we would do better to face.

There are obviously different ways of gaining knowledge of men, and the capacities or capabilities that make one good in one or the other do not coincide. Just as some good psychoanalysts are not good Menschen Kenner, there are also good Menschen Kenner who know nothing about psychoanalysis.

Practical considerations often, but not always, play a great role in Menschen Kenntnis. There may be questions of motivation and of the behaviour we would expect of a human being in a given situation, or his capacities to solve specific problems. In all these aspects psychoanalysis can be helpful, though not in every one to the same degree. Psychoanalysis and Menschen Kenntnis are not strictly separated, but of course there is an essential difference in methods. We can clearly say what the psychoanalytic method is, but to describe the method that the Menschen Kenner uses is not easy. The choice of approach depends on the aims we set, or the situations in which we use it, and so on. Certainly we can count the great intuitive psychologists in a certain sense among the Menschen Kenner. But we should not forget that there are people with admirable psychological imagination to whom the correct application to the ind