Friedrich Weiss (später Frederick Wyatt)
| Born: |
08-25-1911 |
| Faculty: |
Philosophical School |
| Category: |
Deprivation of academic degree |
Friedrich WEISS (later Frederick WYATT) (born on August 25th, 1911 in Vienna), began to study psychology, philosophy and literature at the Philosophical School of the University of Vienna in 1930. From 1934 on he also received psychoanalytic training at the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna and became assistant psychologist at the university speech clinic at the General Hospital in Vienna. He graduated at the Philosophical School at the University of Vienna in Philosophy on June 12th, 1936 with the academic degree 'Dr. phil.' (dissertation: 'Der Begriff des Unbewussten seit Kant. Geschichte und Kritik.').
After the "Anschluss" Weiss initially emigrated to London/Great Britain in March 1938, an then to the USA by the end of the year, where he arrived in 1939 and changed his name to Frederick Wyatt.
During the next decade he held a number of academic positions: He was Research Associate at the Department of Education at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, from 1939-1940, Research Associate at the Psychological Clinic of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, between 1940 and 1943, and also worked at Simmons College in Boston and Boston University. In Boston he also continued his psychoanalytic training, which he had begun in Vienna. Between 1943 und 1949 he was clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and at MacLean Hospital of the Harvard Medical School, and in other hospitals.
In times of Nazism he was deprived of his academic degree on July 14th, 1942 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig').
It took 13 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 15th, 1955.
In 1952 Wyatt moved to the University of Michigan, where he built up the Psychological Clinic and devoted to the teaching and practice of psychoanalytically oriented therapy. He was president of the Division 10 (Psychology and the Arts) of the American Psychological Association, presdent of the Society for Projective Techniques and three times Fulbright professor.
After his retirement Frederick Wyatt moved to Freiburg/Germany in 1974, where he began a new career in practicing and teaching psychoanalysis.
He died on September 3rd, 1993 in Freiburg.
Lit.: Database "Oesterreichische Soziologinnen und Soziologen im Exil 1933 bis 1945", University of Graz; obituary by Joseph Adelson, in: American Psychologist, Vol 50/4 (April 1995), 301; GEUTER 1986, 281; STADLER II 2004 [1988], 255, 257, 262; University of Michigan/Faculty History Project.
Katharina Kniefacz
