Abraham, Karl

(1877-1925)

   Freudian theorist; established the first in-stitute for training psychoanalysts. Born to a prosperous and cultured Jewish home in Bremen, he earned a medical degree at Freiburg and then took a post in a hospital near Burgholzli, Switzerland, to study with Carl Jung. The latter introduced him to Sigmund Freud in 1907. Abraham soon moved to Berlin* and secured a position at the city's mental hospital. After several years he began a private psychiatric practice.

   Abraham was among Freud's closest collaborators. In 1910 he formed the Berlin Psychoanalytical Society, but he is best remembered for founding, with Max Eitingon, the clinic that in 1920 became the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. With Abraham as principal theoretician, it was the first center devoted to training analysts. Although plans were made to make him ausserordentlicher Professor at Berlin, hostility toward psychoanalysis precluded the appointment. Abraham worked on war neuroses, drug addiction, and anal eroticism; he also contributed the idea that biology dictates a sequence in developing the aims of the libido. Although he was praised for his insight into "object relations," he was better known for clinical work than for theory. Chronic bronchitis, contracted during World War I, caused his early death.

   REFERENCES:Karl Abraham, Selected Papers; Peter Gay, Weimar Culture; IEPPPN; Ernest Jones, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud; Oxford Companion to the Mind.