On June 28, 2020, at 1:20 p.m., our friend and colleague Prof. Dr. Horst Kächele died in Ulm in the presence of his wife Beate, who had fallen ill herself, and his family. After long suffering, one must add. With much courage he spent much of the time of his deadly illness revising the new edition of the “Ulmer Lehrbuch,” lying in bed with the computer on his lap – a masterwork of dedication to a lifelong task of helping to keep psychoanalysis at the forefront of its time. The three volumes of the “Ulmer Lehrbuch,” translated into and printed in more than 20 languages since 1985, will also be a guiding star for future historians of psychoanalysis. For clinicians, they already are.
In fact, there has been and is hardly anyone who has known such a wide range of theoretical and clinical ramifications of long-running, highly interesting discussions, who has been able to establish such rich connections to neighboring sciences (especially infant research, but also literature, neuroscience, social research, and philosophy), and who has been able to constantly draw on first-hand experience, because he simply knew God and the psychoanalytical world, heavenly and internationally. And this is no wonder, because he, who read Freud at the age of 17, was amusedly called an “early starter” and had long paths already behind him when others were just starting.
The way Horst presented the invited speakers at several congresses organized jointly at the IPU was influenced by this. He avoided a formal reading of this or that which someone had published, but visibly enjoyed describing the greats from personal experience, with warmth and charm and at the same time an inimitably ironic distance, which also amused him about his own pleasure of being close to them – and one had to smile involuntarily about this variant of “Apud Sanctos”– the formula for those who wanted to be buried “with the saints,” in or near the church. This, of course, did not prevent him from making himself heard with the best psychoanalytical politeness, namely with disrespectful respect, with a strong voice, and from interfering and sometimes stirring up shallow discussions. Those who were frightened by this the first time soon recognized the great value of this courageous breaking-through of false considerations.
Horst, the researcher, sometimes had to fight with the rumor that he was “not a clinician.” Now, anyone who listened to sound recordings of his treatments, which he made available to researchers (always with his consent) or used in seminars, was surprised. Horst was a clinician of the first order, with sensitivity, linguistic skill, wisdom, and tact. He distanced himself from “emo-talk,” which in the spirit of the times has pushed itself so far into the general public and can only suggest depth; this was too shallow for him. It is also true that anyone who, like him, had teachers, colleagues, and friends such as Helmut Thomä, or Lester Luborsky and Merton Gill, knew what the treatment room was all about, how to approach it, and how to engage helpfully for their patients. All who really knew him saw it that way. He got involved with his patients because he loved psychoanalysis, which of course has to prove itself in practice.
Beyond the psychoanalytical world, Horst was involved in the SPR (Society for Psychotherapy Research), of which he was one of the co-founders, which he helped steer from the very beginning, and whose expertise he moved to Ulm. Since the unforgotten first “Ulmer Werkstatt” in 1987, psychotherapy research in Germany has been connected with his name, and at that time was connected especially with the subject of psychoanalysis. His merits in both research and psychoanalysis were honored by the Sigmund Freud Prize from the City of Vienna in 2002 and the Sigourney Award from the IPA in 2004. Because he knew that the practice of psychoanalysis is speaking and silence, and because he had built up the “Ulmer Textbank” in Ulm since the 1980s with Erhard Mergenthaler, he, the physician who arrived in his 60s, once again in psychology, naturally did his doctorate on topics of communication. That was for him also a victory over aging.
It was clear that he would not really be able to win this fight. Nevertheless, he revived and spent himself – by supporting students at home and abroad, by editing his texts, and by collaborating on new publications and joint trips with doctoral students to Tehran, Moscow, Bucharest, Jerusalem, Istanbul. A dedication to the cause that is hard to find elsewhere.
We want to honor him by missing him, by mourning him and letting ourselves be infected by his devotion to psychoanalysis and science. This reduces the pain when we have to become aware of it: Horst, you are missed!
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Michael B. Buchholz
Prof. Dr. Michael B. Buchholz is a fully trained psychoanalyst, social scientist, and psychologist, and professor of social psychology at IPU (International Psychoanalytic University), Berlin, Germany.