Siegfried Bernfeld And Social Education

Siegfried Bernfeld was a first-generation psychoanalyst who played an important role at the time, but was then banished unfairly. His work was very interesting and his contribution is still relevant today.

Anna Freud said that Siegfried Bernfeld was “a unique creature”. In fact, Sigmund Freud spoke of him in one of his letters: “He is a leading expert in psychoanalysis. I consider him to be perhaps the most gifted of my students and disciples. He also has superior knowledge. He is an irresistible speaker and extremely influential teacher. Overall, I have only good things to say about him. “

Like his comrades , Siegfried Bernfeld lived in a socially and politically violent time. The fact that he was a Jew made him endure persecution, and he focused on reflecting on the social spheres. He deviated from psychoanalysis and became more involved in the collective phenomenon from a political point of view.

Like many other psychoanalysts, Siegfried Bernfeld was a Jew. He was born in Lemberg, Galicia in 1892. His parents were textile traders. Bernfeld’s passion for nature led him to study zoology and botany.

Pedagogy and psychology deeply interested him at an early age. He found hypnosis extremely fascinating because it was very innovative at the time. In fact, he practiced it on his younger brother. In addition, he was interested in Maria Montessori’s theories. He later studied psychoanalysis and  became fascinated by the free association method.

At the age of 22, he married Anne Salomon – a young student and passionate supporter of Marxism. She influenced Bernfeld’s thoughts and actions in general.

Motivated by his political commitment, Siegfried Bernfeld created an institution dedicated to bringing up Jewish children orphaned after the First World War. The institution’s goal was to train them so that they could emigrate to Palestine. He protected about 145 children. It is important to mention that many of them had severe trauma. As a consequence, it made him lean even more towards psychoanalysis.

Shortly afterwards he met Sigmund Freud, and it ended with him opening a reception in Vienna in 1922. By that time he had established a close friendship with Anna Freud, and many considered him a great pioneer in the new psychoanalytic movement. Together with Anna and other relevant psychoanalysts at the time, he created a group dedicated to helping homeless children.

The group’s main goal was  to expand the subjects of psychoanalysis to the social field. In 1925, Siegfried Bernfeld published his first two works on social education. One of them focused on adolescence and the other on German educational methods.

Siegfried Bernfeld married three times and lived in several European countries when Nazism developed. He ended up moving to San Francisco, California with his third wife. Unlike other psychoanalysts, Bernfeld did not feel satisfied with the “psychology of the self” that became popular in the United States.

Perhaps his nostalgia and great intellectual curiosity led him to become one of Freud’s most important biographers. Although people did not consider him the “official” cartoonist, his articles were clearly retracted by Ernest Jones,  who Anna Freud considered her father’s authorized cartoonist.

In short, Siegfried Bernfeld left interesting essays in which he spoke about the principles of psychoanalysis and social education. His studies of adolescent psychology are remarkable. He founded the first psychoanalytic community in San Francisco. Many remember him as a compulsive tobacco consumer, an admirer of beautiful women and an honest psychoanalyst.