John Flügel

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John Carl Flügel (or Flügel) (13 June 1884 – 6 August 1955), was a British psychologist and psychoanalyst.

Life and career

The English psychoanalyst John Carl Flügel was born in London on 13 June 1884. An honorary fellow of the British Psychological Society and an honorary member of the Indian Psychological Association, he was president of the Programme Committee of the International Congress on Mental Health in 1948 and president of the psychology section of the British Medical Association in 1950.

Flügel's father was German and his mother English, and the family also had close ties with France, and so Flügel learned all three languages as he grew up. Because of a congenital malformation of his feet, however, he did not follow a normal pattern of secondary education. Aged only 17 he attended Oxford University where he studied philosophy and grew interested in hypnotism, becoming a member of Frederick Myers's Society for Psychical Research. He obtained a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford and a doctorate of science from the University of London, where he taught as an auxiliary professor, between 1929 and 1944, in the experimental psychology laboratory. In 1913 he married Ingeborg Klingberg, who also became a psychoanalyst. They had one daughter.

Flügel was honorary secretary of the British Psychological Society from 1911 to 1920, honorary librarian from 1911 to 1932, and its president from 1932 to 1935. During the First World War he made a number of important contributions to the society.

After undergoing psychoanalysis with Ernest Jones, the two became friends and Flügel became involved, in 1919, in the refounding of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He was also secretary of the International Psychoanalytic Association from 1919 to 1924 and with Ernest Jones helped create the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1920. He also helped translate Sigmund Freud's Vorlesungen (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; 1916-1917a [1915-1917]).

In 1932 he was elected president of the British Psychological Society

Flüge died in London on 17 August 1955.

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Graham Richards, ‘Flügel, John Carl (1884–1955)’, first published 2004, 822 words http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/60995
• John Carl’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, accessed 30 Jan 2012
• http://hopc.bps.org.uk/document-download-area/document-download$.cfm?file_uuid=8450726C-9E69-C32B-E288-71A9B498D8A3&ext=pdf
• Alain de Mijolla Gale Dictionary of Psychoanalysis: John Carl Flügel http://www.answers.com/topic/fl-gel-john-carl