Fritz Morgenthaler


Fritz Morgenthaler was a Swiss psychoanalyst, physician and painter. Morgenthaler was along with George Devereux one of the founders of ethnopsychoanalysis.

Life

Fritz Morgenthaler was the son of the Swiss painter Ernst Morgenthaler and his wife Sasha Morgenthaler-von Sinner. He studied medicine at the University of Zurich and got his degree in 1945. His doctoral thesis, Untersuchungen über die Phänomenologie des Fussohlenreflexes beim Gesunde, was published in 1948. While he was working at a neurological hospital in Zurich he trained as a psychoanalyst with Rudolf Brunn.
Together with his wife Ruth, and Paul Parin and his wife Goldy Parin-Matthèy he undertook expeditions to West Africa and they developed the concept of ethnopsychoanalysis.
Morgenthaler also was the first psychoanalyst who said that homosexuality is not an illness or psychological defect.

Works