Depth psychological Educational Guidance in Vienna since 1920

The research project under consideration is entitled "The History of Psychoanalytic-Pedagogical and Individual Psychological Educational Guidance in Vienna from 1920 until Present Time: The Historical Development and its Implications for Current Institutional Developments". The first step of research will include the scientific examination and evaluation of information and archive material dating from the period 1920 - 1970, which until recently has never been publically available for research purposes. The second step will be analysis of the significance of the experiences and conceptual developments of that period in light of current developments in the institutionalization of educational guidance. The examination of the development of depth psychological educational guidance will include interviews of people who played an important role in its development. In addition, the following unpublished archive material will be analysed: counselling protocols found in the papers of Oskar Spiel and the protocols of the Educational Guidance and Children`s Counselling Department of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Association, and materials from the August Aichhorn Society, the Austrian Society for Individual Psychology, and the estate of Rosa Dworschak. Finally, information from selected non-scientific publications of the interwar period and essays ftom hard-to-find journals and periodicals should provide fürther information about the development of depth psychological educational guidance. The institutionalization of depth psychology oriented educational guidance will always be dealt with in consideration of the public toward which these techniques of educational guidance werde and continue to be directed. Furthermore, the methods of depth psychology oriented educational guidance and the problems involved in the training of educational counselors will be investigated. The goal of this research project is to attain a comprehensive understanding of the development and conception of depth psychological educational guidance between the early 1920`s and the late 1960`s and to explore their impfications for current tendencies in depth psychological educational guidance.

In the very first decades of the 20th century depth psychology was founded by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Representatives of Psychoanalysis and Individual Psychology developed not only concepts for psychotherapeutic work but also counselling concepts, especially concepts for counselling work in different fields of education. Their engagement in educational counselling with parents, teacher, children and young people and their scientific papers concerning this subject were important contributions to the process of the constitution of psychoanalytic education (i.e. "psychoanalysis in education" as a special subject of "science of education"). Nevertheless there existed little knowledge about: - the institutional framework of depth psychological educational counselling; - the clients` social background; - the development of specific methods ("technique") of educational counselling; - the training of counsellers (training curricula and methods). These four points of interest were investigated. Documents found in Viennese archives were evaluated; newspaper reports and scientific journals, published after 1918, were analysed; and Psychoanalysts and Individual Psychologists, who had influenced and stimulated the development of depth psychological counselling in Vienna, were interviewed. Based on these materials main features of a "history of educational counselling in Vienna" could be worked out with many new details concerning: August Aichhorn`s activities in the youth welfare department and in the Viennese Association of Psychoanalysis; the close relations between Individual Psychology and private welfare organisations and their importance for the establishment of 28 counselling institutions, where Indivdual psychologists worked free of charge; the counselling activities of Fritz Redl, who became a famous scientist in the USA after the World War II with studies on "children who hate"; the foundation of Child Guidance Clinics in the late 1940th ; the development of a three year training program for psychoanalytic oriented educational counsellors; and the documentation of research papers on educational counselling published by Viennese scientists in the 1980th and 1990th . Special attention was paid to the political changes which took place in Austria in 1934, 1938 and 1945 and the incisive consequences for the development of concepts and institutions of educational counselling which arrived from these political occurrences. Focussing educational counselling in Vienna it could be demonstrated in detail, in which way these political changes influenced the development of educational education as well as psychoanalytic education in toto for decades. The research results concern the very early beginnings of depth psychological educational counselling and further developmental lines. The research report is therefore a contribution to a comprehensive history of psychoanalytic education.