Rudolf Allers
Quick Facts
Biography
Rudolf Allers (13 January 1883, Vienna - 14 December 1963, Hyattsville, Maryland, USA) was an Austrian psychiatrist who was a member of the first group of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
Career
Allers was the only Catholic to join the first group of the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. Together with Alfred Adler, he later distanced himself from psychoanalysis as understood by Freud and his followers. He was later detached from the group of Adler along with Oswald Schwarz. He taught at the University of Vienna (1919).
He was master of Viktor Frankl, guidance of Hans Urs von Balthasar and friend of St. Edith Stein. Both von Balthasar and Stein lived for several months in the house of Allers in Vienna.
He studied the preventive method of St. John Bosco and his pedagogical applications, and at the invitation of Father Agostino Gemelli, was in Italy to study the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas at the Catholic University of Milan and graduated in Philosophy in 1934.
With the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich, Allers emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC (1938 - 1948), and later at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1958.
Family
Rudolf Allers was son of doctor Mark Abeles (1837-1894, originally of Jewish extraction from Czechia) and Auguste Grailich (1858-1916, daughter of Wilhelm Josef Grailich and Carolina Augusta von Ettingshausen).He had a sister, Marianne Abeles (1884-1915).
In 1908 he married Carola Meitner, sister of Lise Meitner physical and contributor to the Nobel laureate Otto Hahn.
Death
Allers is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery in Washington DC.
Books
Work and Play. Collected Papers on the Philosophy of Psychology (1938-1963). Edited by Alexander Batthyány, Jorge Olaechea Catter, Andrew Tallon. Marquette University Press, 2009.
Self Improvement. Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1939. Republished by Kessinger Publishing, New York, 2010.
What's Wrong With Freud? A Critical Study of Freudian Psychoanalysis. Roman Catholic Books, US., 1941
Forming Character in Adolescents
Sex Psychology. Roman Catholic Books.
Über Schadelschusse: Probleme Der Klinik und Der Fursorge
Biography details in: Notes on Rudolf Allers and His Thought by Alexander Batthyány in: Allers Rudolf: Work and Play. Collected Papers on the Philosophy of Psychology (1938-1963). Marquette University Press, 2009.
