Search

The Viennese historian Johannes Reichmayr has edited the Collected Works of the psychoanalyst Paul Parin (1916-2009) in 19 volumes, published by the Viennese publisher Mandelbaum from 2018 to 2024. A pioneer of ethnopsychoanalysis, Parin has lived psychoanalysis as a form of social critique and political action, whose gradual and systematic articulation comes out very clearly from his Collected Works. Parin’s works are reconstructed in great detail in the context of his life, of the Zurich Psychoanalytic Seminar (PSZ) founded by him, and of his close collaboration with the journal Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane. The same is true for his successful literary activity, and for his participation in political life, documented as they are by a whole series of autobiographical papers and by various collections of letters, as it is shown also in the light of volumes 9 and 10, the latter being centered around “The burning problems of our times” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of ethnopsychoanalysis means also, as ethnopsychoanalysts such as Paul Parin and Mario Erdheim have emphasized, the freedom to follow our own curiosity (Erdheim for example did field research also on high school students). A book by Paul Parin on hunting (Die Jagd. Licence for Sex and Crime. Erzählungen und Essays. Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2018) is discussed not simply as an appreciation of Parin’s literary work, but as contribution to ethnopsychoanalysis and its methodology. Paul Parin (1916-2009) had often talked about the project of writing a book on the issue of power, but he believed he could not write it. However, in 2003 he wrote this collection of tales on hunting which is in effect also a book on power. It is an important study on power fantasies and processes, to the point that it can be somehow associated to Elias Canetti’s 1960 book Crowds and Power and also to Sigmund Freud’s 1910 essay Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (dementia paranoides) (Case history of Schreber). A version of this paper was presented at a meeting for the 100th anniversary of Paul Parin’s birth at the Sigmund Freud University (SFU) of Vienna, September 1-4, 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]