Finding Fred Plaut

Abstract

Thomas B. Kirsch, “Finding Fred Plaut,” The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, 2005, 24:3, 35-37. Review of Fred Plaut, Between Losing and Finding: The Life of an Analyst, London, Free Association Books, 2004. Fred Plaut is now 91 years old and has been a major figure in analytical psychology in both the United Kingdom and Germany. He was the Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychologyafter Michael Fordham, a training analyst, and author of over eighty articles and three books, including Analysis Analyzed (1993), A Dictionary of Jungian Analysiswith Bani Shorter and Andrew Samuels, and his recent autobiography, Between Losing and Finding (2004). Since 1986 he has been living in Berlin, where he continued to do training and analysis until he retired last year.

Having been born in Germany during World War I, leaving it during the Nazi period and ending up in apartheid South Africa, he immigrated to Great Britain in 1946, and has now returned to Germany. This well-written autobiography, full of wisdom and wit, deserves to be read by all who are interested in the history of analytical psychology.

Key Words:

• Autobiography
• psychoanalysis
• analytical psychology
• Society of Analytical Psychology
• history of depth psychology
• Freud
• Jung
• analytical psychology in Germany