Rudolf Allers’s Followers (11)

Rudolf Allers

Born

in Vienna, Austria

January 30, 1883

Died

December 18, 1963

Genre

Psychology, Religion

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He was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. He worked with Alfred Adler for 13 years until he decided to part away. Victor Frankl, the creator of the Logotherapy, was thrown out of Adler’s group because he was a disciple of Allers and shared his ideas.

He wrote and published around 600 books and papers, and had a great influence in his time. Why we know so little about him remains a mystery. Might this be a result of the so called Totschweigetaktik (the silent tactic)? This page tries to make up a little for that ungratefulness or silencing tactic.

Rudolf Allers was a physician, psychologist and philosopher. He was born in Vienna (Austria), in 1883. He received his MD in 1906, from the University of Vienna. After practicing medicine for two years, he He was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. He worked with Alfred Adler for 13 years until he decided to part away. Victor Frankl, the creator of the Logotherapy, was thrown out of Adler’s group because he was a disciple of Allers and shared his ideas.

He wrote and published around 600 books and papers, and had a great influence in his time. Why we know so little about him remains a mystery. Might this be a result of the so called Totschweigetaktik (the silent tactic)? This page tries to make up a little for that ungratefulness or silencing tactic.

Rudolf Allers was a physician, psychologist and philosopher. He was born in Vienna (Austria), in 1883. He received his MD in 1906, from the University of Vienna. After practicing medicine for two years, he studied to be a psychiatrist. He began to get interested in Sigmund Freud’s work, and belonged to his last class. Allers did not agree with what he describes as unscientific ideas of Freud (1). He worked in mental clinics in Munich (Germany). We find him in 1913 as instructor of psychiatry at the University of Munich. In World War I he worked as a surgeon in the Austrian Army. Afterwards he wrote a book about bullet wounds in the head. He also had worked in a biochemistry lab and wrote several papers on his experiments.

From 1918 to 1938 he specialized in psychiatry. He taught and did research in the Medical School in Vienna. He was also Director of the School of Medical Psychology. From 1920 he also worked in private psychotherapeutic consultation.

In between these occupations he went to the Sacro Cuore University in Milan (Italy), invited by the famous Father Agostino Gemelli, one of the founders of the great Catholic University in northern Italy, where he earned his doctoral degree in Philosophy (1934). Allers was fully convinced that one should understand very well the anthropological and philosophical issues at stake in the views or fundamentals of psychology and psychiatry.

In 1938 he foresaw the peril for him and his family by Hitler’s takeover of Austria, so he decided to accept an invitation to go to USA to teach psychology in The Catholic University of America.

Allers was and remained Catholic all his life. In 1948 he was appointed professor of philosophy in Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In 1960 he received a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. He was President of the Washington Philosophical Club and also of the Metaphysical Society of America. The Catholic Philosophical Association granted him the famous Thomas Aquinas Medal. He also was a Fullbright lecturer in France, Austria and Switzerland in 1955 and 1956.

Even though he became a professor Emeritus in 1957, he taught almost until his last days on earth. Georgetown University sent him students to the nursing home at Carroll Manor Archdiocesan House where the scholar of international reputation gave classes to them in the solarium of the house, specially conditioned for that purpose by the Carmelite sisters who took care of the house. Allers said of them: "These nuns are full of love for God and for the souls and bodies of those under their care. They must be very dear to God".

Father Brian A. McGrath wrote: To his students Professor Allers was a scholar and a gentleman. Quick, erudite, open, he valued the questioning mind, the new insights while he cherished the best of the ancient and medieval traditions; he was also patient but demanding, stirring and encouraging, attentive to both the novice and the candidate. With his colleagues he was generous and cooperative without cant or pretense. He could not be categorized because he was never bound in a narrow system. Plato and Aristotle, Thomas and Kant, Marx, Russell and Whitehead were respected for their contributions. He felt free to agree or disagree with their solutions as he explored the reality in his search for truth". One would have to add the names of Saint Augustine, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Scheler, Jame ...more

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Rudolf Allers’s books

Average rating: 4.0 · 34 ratings · 6 reviews · 30 distinct works • Similar authors

	Self Improvement 4.89 avg rating — 9 ratings — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Forming Character in Adolescents 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	What's Wrong With Freud? - A Critical Study of Freudian Psychoanalysis - Originally Titled The Successful Error 3.50 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1941 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Improvement of the Self really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY IN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT An Abridged Version of the Author's Psychology of Character by Rudolf Allers, Vera C. Barclay liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1934	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sex Psychology liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Microcosmus [from Anaximandros to Paracelsus] it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Psychology of Character really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1931 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Psicologia e pedagogia del carattere. it was ok 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Existentialism and Psychiatry it was ok 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars