Trauma und Transformation

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy Magdeburg (IPM), the history of psychodynamic thinking and psychoanalytic institute culture is traced back in the context of political traumatization and its overcoming through transformation into a democratic culture of encounters. Magdeburg is one of the German cities in which there is no evidence of an independent psychoanalytic culture before 1933. National Socialism, World War II, Stalinism and the post-Stalinist German Democratic Republic (GDR) dictatorship largely marginalized psychoanalytic thinking until the German reunification. In connection with the founding of the chair in psychosomatics at the Otto-von-Guericke University in 1999, a continuing training institute was established, the origin and history of which is traced back, including the conflict situations within the institute’s culture and transgenerational transmission, which reflect the previous history and the historical development.