Felix Deutsch

Born:	08-09-1884
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled teacher

Felix DEUTSCH (born on August 9th, 1884 in Vienna, died on January 2nd, 1964 in Cambridge/USA) was the son of Nathan Deutsch (bank official, died in 1889) and his wife Franziska nee Bruckner. After he has graduated from state high school ('Staatsgymnasium') in Vienna 3rd district in 1903, he  studied medicine at the University of Vienna (graduation 1909). During his studies he became a member of the Jewish student fraternity "Kadimah". In 1912 he married Helene Rosenbach (1884–1982), who had studied medicine in Munich, graduated in Vienna in the same year and later became a well-known psychoanalyst. In 1917 their son Martin was born. Helene Deutsch worked as an assistant doctor at the Psychiatric clinic of Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg. Subsequently she began a psychoanalytic training and became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. She established the Psychoanalytic teaching institute and was its head until her emigration in 1934. He worked in different jobs, among others as an internist at the hospital Wieden in Vienna. In 1919 he was promoted lecturer ('Dozent') für Innere Medizin at the Medical School of the University of Vienna. As Internist he specialised on heart disease. In 1919 he founded the first clinic for organ neuroses. He is considered a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine. In 1927 he re-integrated the term "psychosomatic" back into a scientific discussion. In 1922 he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and was Co-founder of a first Psychoanalytic outpatient clinic. Felix Deutsch was persecuted in times of Nazism as a Jew lost his position as lecturer for internal medicine and was thrown out of the university on April 22nd, 1938. 
His wife and his son Martin Deutsch (later MIT professor) left Austria in 1934 during the Austro-fascism and emigrated via Zurich/Switzerland in the USA. Felix Deutsch followed them in 1935, emigrating to the USA, too. There he taught as the first Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (1939 to 1941), and at Harvard University. He also founded the journal 'Psychosomatic Medicine'. From 1951 to 1954 he was president of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society. He lived in Boston until his death in 1964.

Lit.: information from Oswald Glaser, 2015; FISCHER Vol. 1 1932; KILLY Vol. 2 1995; MERINSKY 1980, 35; Elke MÜHLLEITNER, Biographisches Lexikon der Psychoanalyse, 1992; ROEDER Vol. 2 1983; TETZLAFF 1982;  UB MedUni Wien/van Swieten Blog.

Katharina Kniefacz