Alfred Doeblin and the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute

My dissertation Alfred Doblin and the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute is an interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between culture and psychoanalysis in Berlin 1918 to 1933 with Alfred Doblin as its main example. While there have been many studies on the connections between psychoanalysis and culture in the context of the Viennese Fin-de-Siecle, the cultural impact of the vibrant psychoanalytical scene in 1920s Berlin, where theorists such as Ernst Simmel, Wilhelm Reich and Karen Horney worked, has gone largely unexplored. Presenting new biographical research and previously unpublished excerpts from Doblin's notes and patient records, I trace Doblin's development from a psychiatrist working in large clinics to a psychoanalytically oriented therapist and family doctor in the largely proletarian neighborhood of Berlin-Lichtenberg. Throughout my dissertation I analyze different genres of texts, namely Doblin's clinical, journalistic and essayistic writings, the psychoanalytical study Die beiden Freundinnen and ihr Giftmord and the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Each genre leads Doblin to employ different modes of representation for his psychoanalytical knowledge and the psychological model he develops. Doblin's primary fascination and concern is the unconscious and he explores its social and spiritual dimension. But instead of addressing the unconscious thematically he creates metaphors that embed its mechanisms in the narrative structure. According to Doblin, we can gain psychological understanding not through psychological commentary but through narrations of our soul. The psychoanalytical discourse on war neurosis, sexuality, and social misery specific to Berlin is reflected in Doblin's psychological conception. He assumes an inseparability of the individual soul from its social environment and increasingly writes from a standpoint of social psychology. In Doblin's fiction a society at war invades the soul and the soul itself becomes a battlefield of violent social forces. In conclusion, I argue that Doblin's literary modernism cannot be understood without consideration of Doblin's clinical work and his connection to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute.