Fonds Hans Behn-Eschenburg  Bern UB Medizingeschichte: Rorschach-Archiv ; Fonds Hans Behn-Eschenburg

Signatur: Rorsch BE

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1920-1955. - 7 boxes (43 cm), Deutsch

Only on inquiry

Biographische Notiz:   Hans Behn-Eschenburg was born on 23rd January 1893 in Oerlikon near Zurich. His father’s family originated in Lübeck from where his grandfather, for political reasons, emigrated to Zurich and there held a position as a university professor of English. Behn-Eschenburg’s father, an engineer, was a prominent pioneer of railway electrification.   Hans Behn-Eschenburg studied medicine in Zurich and Basle, concluding his studies in 1919 in Zurich. In September 1919 he was engaged as a trainee in the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Herisau and there became acquainted with Rorschach’s inkblot experiment. He was to become the first to write a dissertation using Rorschach’s inkblot method but Rorschach’s cards had not yet been published, and Rorschach, needing his cards for further testing, was then not willing to make them available to Behn-Eschenburg. Therefore it was decided to create a new series of ten blots, each of them meeting the same conditions as Rorschach’s but adapted to Behn-Eschenburg’s requirements for testing children and adolescents. From the numerous blots produced for this purpose the ten best suited and meeting Rorschach’s need for a parallel series were selected. In the weeks following Behn-Eschenburg tested pupils from various schools and, under the close guidance of Rorschach, wrote his dissertation “Psychische Schüleruntersuchungen mit dem Formdeutversuch” (psychological investigations on pupils using the Form Interpretation Experiment), which was published in 1921, a few weeks after Rorschach’s “Psychodiagnostik”.   For financial reasons, however, the ten cards were not printed until 1939/40, when Hans Zulliger had them published under the title “Behn-Rorschach-Versuch (Be-Ro-Test)”. Unfortunately Behn-Eschenburg’s original series created in Herisau has since been lost.   Thanks to Rorschach, Behn-Eschenburg became interested also in Freudian psychoanalysis and joined the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society as early as in 1920. After training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, he opened a private practice in 1924 in Zurich. In 1934 he contributed to the organization of the 13th Congress of the Internationale Psychoanalytische Vereinigung (IPV) in Lucerne, where he was to have given a lecture on the adaptation to reality. However on the first day of the congress he was prostrated by a severe illness from which he died one month later.   Inhaltsangabe:   Besides Rorschach related material the fonds contains manuscripts and papers on psychiatric and psychoanalytic topics.

https://swisscollections.ch/Record/991170538911105501 (Katalogeintrag in swisscollections) 

Akzession: Herkunft: The fonds consist of two deliveries, donated by Annemarie Vest-Behn-Eschenburg (daughter of H. Behn-Eschenburg) in August 2001, and Hans Vest (grandson of H. Behn-Eschenburg) in June 2013. The files belonging to the second delivery are marked in field Akzession (541).  

CH-002121-2-991170538911105501, http://kalliope-verbund.info/CH-002121-2-991170538911105501

Modifikation: 02.07.2021

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