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Abraham, Karl (b. May 3, 1877, Bremen, now in West Germany. Dec. 25, 1925, Berlin), psychoanalyst whose studies on the role of infant sexuality in character development and mental illness continue to be basic in the field of psychoanalysis.
While serving as an assistant to the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler at the Burghblzi Mental Hospital in ZUrich (1904-07), Abraham met the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and made his initial acquaintance with the ideas of Sigmund Freud. His first psychoanalytic paper dealt with childhood sexual trauma in relation to the symptoms of schizophrenia.
Entering psychoanalytic practice at Berlin (1907), where he helped to establish the first branch of the International Psychoanalytic Institute (1910), he began work that was to enrich the theory of symbols and myths. Many of his interpretations of symbols, such as that of the spider for a feared mother, became widely accepted. In a major paper (published in 1909) he connected myths with dreams and viewed both as wish-fulfillment fantasies.
Abraham devoted himself chiefly to pioneering efforts in the psychoanalytic treatment of psychoses, Of these he was primarily concerned with manic-depressive psychosis.
He suggested that the libido, or sexual drive, develops in six stages: earlier oral, oral-sadistic, anal expulsive, anal retentive, phallic, and adult genital. If an infant’s development becomes arrested at any of the earlier stages, mental disorders result from a libidinal fixation at that level. He associated various traits with both successful and frustrated development. For instance, gratification at the earlier oral stage results in such positive traits as curiosity, accessibility to new ideas, and sociability. In contrast, anal fixations lead to reticence, moroseness, hesitation, procarstination, and inaccessibility to new ideas.
Abraham's most important work, A Short of the Development of the Libido, Viewed in the Light of Mental Disorders, was published in German in 1924 and appeared in English in his Selected Papers (1953). “Character-Formation on the Genital Level of Libido-Development,” also contained in the Selected Papers, is a translation of his last major paper (1925). H.C. Abraham and EL. Freud have edited A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907—1926 (1966).
