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Dr. Karl Wongstchowski
My first recollection of J H Schultz goes back more than 60 years to the mid twenties, when I listened to a lecture he gave at a Medical Congress In Berlin. The huge audience was no less captivated by the contents of his presentation than by the charm and sense of humour of the speaker. Schultz had only a short while before settled in practice in Berlin, after having been for several years the medical head of a famous sanatorium in Dresden. So It was only natural that he also mentioned some of his recent, often amazing and amusing, experiences in that institute. One of his stories sticks in my memory - that of the married lady referred because of "general fatigue", whose symptoms, however, disappeared as if by magic as soon as Schultz had examined her. "However", Schultz said, "it was not I who had performed the miracle. The healing agent, in fact, was a Mr. Y who had faithfully kept the pre-arranged appointment. In this case," he added with a chuckle, "I had no trouble in strictly observing Freud's rule for therapeutic abstinence." J H Schultz was a slim, rather short, man, delicately built. Born In 1884, the son of a Professor of Theology at Göttingen University, his health as a child had been far from good. Six months old, he contracted whooping cough and double pneumonia, followed by bronchial troubles and, as he described them in his 'Picture Book of the Life of a Doctor for Nervous Diseases ', "immensely tormenting" asthmatic attacks, lasting sell into his thirties. For good measure, at 32 during the First World War, he became severely ill with dysentery, being affected for years by the after-effects. In his fight against illness and physical shortcoming with an obstinate will for health, Schultz was supported by an inborn love for horses, about which I would like to say a bit more as it provides a key for the understanding of his personality. "Already at four", Schultz writes in the above mentioned book, "it was for me an experience of the utmost joy, when one of my uncles placed me before him in the saddle and we were riding down the country roads. At the age of eight, the kindness of my parents enabled me to start a proper study of riding. Out of my positive relationship to horses and riding grew a sphere of experience which was of decisive importance for my whole life, and I owe it to the fact that I was able, to a modest degree, to acquire the art of riding, that the many harrowing shortcomings of mine did not weight too heavily on my psychological balance. My occupation with training an animal, was, without doubt, a preparation of fundamental importance for my therapeutic work." (My underlinings). Schultz' lifelong multi-faceted relationship to horses was complemented by his love for music and art - he played the violin, somehow even managing Beethoven's 'Spring Sonata' - and he did not fail to be attracted by "lovely sweet ladies, whose kindness and graces often enriched my life". Originally Schultz had wished to study German Philology. A well-meaning friend of the family, however, thought that in view of the young man's far from brilliant school reports it would be more expedient for him to study medicine. Fortunately Schultz did not scorn the advice, and so, via some round-about ways, amongst them an attempt to enter on an academic career in dermatology, he eventually arrived at psychotherapy, to become one of its root illustrious representatives of his time. Schultz combined an enormous capacity for work with an inherent drive for utmost efficiency. In line with his own maxims and life style, he regarded as a principal virtue of A.T. Its usefulness as an instrument to increase a person's faculties for "achievement" (Leistung), - a view qualified by the younger generation. Schultz' attitude to psychoanalysis was never, as occasionally implied, a negative one. He was, on the contrary, fully aware of the significance of Freud's findings and went himself into a training analysis for several years. What he underlined was - with a threatening symptom in the foreground - the therapeutic priority to try and mitigate it before a depth-psychological approach could be contemplated. (If the house is in flames, this is not the moment to philosophise about fire.) I vividly remember his statement made in a ringing voice at one of the annual Lindau (Lake Constance) Psychotherapy Weeks (300 participants on average): "Sometimes, gentlemen, a course of A.T. could lead to a quicker and less costly result than 450 hours of psychoanalysis" - a typical 'Schultz', but in its inference certainly not an unwarranted pronouncement. No doubt, however, Schultz would have found himself in agreement with Wallnoefer's dictum that "already concerning the basic stage, separation between A.T. and analysis is hardly possible, if the analyst is analysed in any form and thinks and feels analytically, and that It is quite pointless to determine the moment when one still does A.T. or already uses analyses of whatever kind". Schultz has passed to posterity the story of his first meeting with Freud. "Freud looked at me, sizing me up and said: 'Surely you do not believe that you could heal' whereupon I replied. 'By no means (keinsfalls), but I think that, like a gardener, I could remove obstacles hindering a person's true development.' 'Then we will understand each other', answered Freud and finished our roughly one-and-a-half hours' long conversation with a charming smile. 'I am really delighted having met you in person and from now on I shall always contradict critical remarks about you by my circle.'" (I was always puzzled by the "by no means". Rather an understatement I would think. Schultz was hardly in the habit to be over-modest concerning the therapeutic possibilities of his A.T..) In parenthesis: to someone's question as to his suitability for A.T., his verdict used to be: "the normal learns it always, the neurotic with some difficulty, the truly crazy never. Now you have the choice to which category you wish to belong. To attend one of Schultz' seminarsrs often meant to go home with an indelible impression. Once he spoke of a famous violinist who, due to his high degree of stage fright had developed that dreaded trembling of the bow. At the end of his A.T., the intentional formula eventually emerging contained just two words: "Sacred art" (Heilige Kunst). As a violinist, I was struck by the pithy and transcendental significance of the formula and made it my own. May I finish by quoting a reply, characteristic for Schultz, to a letter of one of today's authorities on A.T. - Prof. Barolin-Austria - who as a young doctor expressed his doubts if in view of his unresolved problems he could dare to do psychotherapeutic work: "Don't worry," Schultz answered, "just start. If every prospective psychotherapist would wait until complete normality, such a things as psychotherapy would be non-existent". |