Georg Groddeck and his Teachings about Man's Innate Need for Symbolization (Author's Abstract): A Contribution to the History of Early Psychoanalytic Psychosomatic Medicine. Martin Grotjahn. Psa. Rev., XXXII, 1945, pp. 9–24.

After having reviewed some of Groddeck's outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis, the author states that Groddeck achieved therapeutic results by reactivating and liberating the unconscious, using everyday language and the new terminology of early psychoanalysis as a means of communication. Georg Groddeck is the most outspoken representative of the intuitive type of analyst, in contrast to the learned therapist. It would be wrong to call Groddeck an artist—which he was—in opposition to a scientist—which he also was. The true problem of his personality and work is the interrelation of artistic intuition and scientific knowledge.

There are two basically different personality types among analysts, representing two basically different types of human understanding: the intuitive and the learned. The ideal analyst combines both types, as did Groddeck.

The importance of intuitive ability in the personality of the analyst is not clearly recognized in the psychoanalytic literature, perhaps due to an old anxiety about, and defense against slipping back into medieval mysticism. Theodor Reik succeeded in showing that intuition originates when the analyst uses his unconscious as a perceptive organ. Reik gives a psychological explanation and justification of the intuitive unconscious communication which Groddeck used naïvely.

Groddeck allowed his unconscious to erupt freely—almost as if he were constantly in the process of being analyzed. Only after his ideas, impressions and interpretations emerged did he put them into more or less socially approved forms. He seduced his listeners into following him, he encouraged them to abandon intellectual and logical censorship. He did not convince by reasoning or by facts—his evidence was of a different kind. He convinced by experience of evidence, leaving it up to his pupils to put the knowledge thus gained into the framework of science. The safeguard against the dangers of Georg Groddeck's methods and against losing oneself i