Im Dienste des Ich

Steffen Krüger

This publication, which includes contributions from German, French and American academics, pays tribute to the multi faceted researcher Ernst Kris (1900 Vienna -1957 New York) from the perspective of different disciplines. In fact one needs three job descriptions to chart his output: art historian, psychoanalyst and communication scientist. At 22, Kris had concluded his art history studies at Vienna University with a doctoral thesis on the technique of casting from life in the late Renaissance, and had worked as a curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. By the middle of the 1920s he had already met Sigmund Freud and started an analysis ? which made him slowly turn away from classical art history. In this period he developed his most interesting and fruitful texts, which founded his reputation as an art psychologist: his studies on the early classicist sculptor Franz Xaver...