The Roots of Psychoanalysis in Slovakia - Emanuel Windholz (1903 - 1986)

Prof. Dr. EMANUEL WINDHOLZ (March 13, 1903, Hronec – May 20, 1986, San Francisco, USA), recognized psychiatrist, pioneer of psychoanalysis, first Czechoslovak member of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He received his medical education at Charles University (German University) in Prague. After completing his medical training in 1927, he completed a residency under the guidance of Dr. Josef Pelnář in a small sanatorium outside Prague, at the Internal Medicine Clinic of the German University. He was a founding member of the Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in San Francisco (1942) and previously of the Prague Psychoanalytic Study Group. After the rise of Nazism, he emigrated to the United States of America, where he fully developed his interest in psychoanalytic research. For many years he directed a graduate seminar in clinical psychoanalysis. In this study group of Windholz, a new method for the study of psychoanalysis was born - consensual analysis, which sought to reveal the unconscious communication between the analyst and the analysand. He also worked as an analyst and functionary at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute (SFPI) and also as a clinical psychologist at the University of California (since 1946 as professor of psychiatry), head of the psychotherapy department at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco.