Otto Gross, 1919. Source: Wikimedia Commons (in the public domain).
Otto Hans Adolf Gross (1877-1920), the son of an Austrian judge and criminologist, has all but been erased from the annals of psychoanalysis. His anarchist views, psychological instability, and affiliation with Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) seem to have caused the erasure.
Gross has, however, also been described as a genius. He encountered and absorbed Freud's works from as early as 1904, calling him "my first instructor in the practice of psycho-analysis" (Jones 1955, "The Beginning of International Recognition"). Sigmund Freud himself declared Gross, along with Jung, to be "the only truly original minds" amongst his followers in 1908 (Jones 1955). In 1902-03 Gross published two books, Die zerebrale Sekund&aulm;rfunktion (The Cerebral Secondary Function) and Über Psychopathische Minderwertigkeit (On Psychopathic Inferiority) both of which Jung cited in Psychological Types (1912; chapter 6). Clearly Gross was becoming a force amongst the Viennese analysts, though this was not to last. Probable schizophrenia and a known morphine addiction soon drew him to Jung's Swiss clinic for treatment (Jones 1955).
Gross died in 1920, apparently from neglect and starvation, on the streets of postwar Berlin. There is no known documentation of his war service and experience, though Jones suggested that he had served in a regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army. Gross's contributions to twentieth-century social and political movements are outside the scope of the present text.
Bibliography
Gross, Otto. Die zerebrale Sekund&aulm;rfunktion (The Cerebral Secondary Function) . 1902.
________. Über Psychopathische Minderwertigkeit (On Psychopathic Inferiority) . 1903.
Jung, C. G. Psychologische Typen (Psychological Types). Zürich: Rascher, 1921.
Created 26 February 2021