This book presents an overview of the life and work of Gustav Ichheiser, a social scientist in Vienna during the early 20th century. Gustav Ichheiser, along with many other Austrian Jews of his time, was forced into exile after the rise of National Socialism in Europe. Ichheiser’s work is considered an important front runner to the attribution theories. He was one of the first to study the phenomena of social misunderstandings in detail and in relation to concrete problem areas, such as success.
The aim of this book is to discuss, on an international level, the importance of Ichheiser’s theoretical approaches in his time and their relevance in today’s context of social and cultural psychology. In addition, the tragic course of Ichheiser’s biography, an example for many displaced scientists, highlights the importance of bringing a scientist’s work back into the focus of today’s current social scientific setting.
Memories of Gustav Ichheiser will be of interestto researchers as well as undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of psychology, social psychology, sociology, and psychiatry.
Table of Content
Chapter 1. Introduction: Finding a biography.-
Part I – Historical Perspectives .- Chapter 2. Seclusion – A safe place? Remarks on the biography of an outsider.- Chapter 3. “Who is Ichheiser?” – A Person who Failed himself and the World.-
Part II – Moving between Disciplines .- Chapter 4. An “Iron Curtain” between Persons: Gustav Ichheiser’s Theoretical Paradoxes.-
Part III– Selected Works from Ichheiser’s German, English, and Polish Papers .- Chapter 5. Being and Appearance: I am not what I appear to be – Ichheiser’s Viennese work on Social Consciousness.- Chapter 6. Appearance and Image in the Perception and Misperception of Self and Other: Ichheiser and Social Psychological Theory.- Chapter 7. The Collages formed by Gustaw Ichheiser’s Polish Texts.-
Part IV– Selected Topics: Ichheiser’s primary Fields of Interest .- Chapter 8. Ichheiser’s critique of success and the performance principle in a neoliberal competitive society.- Chapter 9. Ideology of Success andthe Dilemma of Education Today.- Chapter 10. Gustav Ichheiser on Rationality and Irrationality.- Part V– Conclusion.- Chapter 11. Schizophrenia is Taking me Home: Gustav Ichheiser’s Uprooting and his Commitment to Psychiatry.- Supplements.
About the author
Amrei C. Joerchel, Ph.D., was a lecture and a research assistant at the Sigmund Freud University, Vienna until 2017 and is now a program supervisor at the Center for Social Dynamics in the Bay Area, CA, USA, where she was appointed to develop a research division. She is the author of several peer review articles and the co-editor of Biographical Ruptures and their Repairs: Cultural Transitions in Development, published 2014.
Gerhard Benetka is a Professor of Pscyhology and Dean of the Faculty of Psychology at the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna.