The Psychosomatic Legacy: A Tribute to Hellmuth Freyberger, MD (1923-2012)

Abstract

This article memorializes Hellmuth Freyberger (1923–2012). Freyberger belonged to a German generation that went through Nazism. He was a soldier (1942– 1944) during World War II. He was injured and held in captivity as a prisoner of war. At the end of the war he was 22 years old. Repairing the damages that were done was a moral priority for him. He graduated in medicine in 1947 at the University of Düsseldorf, where he also completed his training in internal medicine. But internal medicine was not enough for him and he developed a strong interest in psychosomatic medicine. Arthur Jores, who articulated the psychosomatic approach within internal medicine in Germany, was probably his most influential teacher. In 1973, he became Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine at the University of Hamburg and a couple of years later moved to Hannover, where he established a cutting-edge psychosomatic department, with inpatient and outpatient facilities. He was head of the department until his retirement in 1991. Freyberger was an outstanding clinician and internist. Throughout his life, he cultivated his interest in the mental consequences of holocaust and imprisonment, with a strong humanitarian approach. His contributions to psychosomatic medicine reflected his clinical skills and his explicit attention to humanness, where observation, introspection and dialogue are the basic methodological triad for clinical assessment and for making patient data scientific. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)