Gustav Bychowski

Who was Gustav Bychowski?

Gustav Bychowski was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. He studied for a medical degree at the University of Zurich and studied psychiatry at Burghölzli, the University of Zurich's psychiatric hospital. He then studied psychoanalysis under Sigmund Freud in Vienna before moving back to Warsaw in 1921 and translating Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis into Polish.

During his career, he wrote a large number of books on psychoanalysis including Evil in Man: The Anatomy of Hate and Violence and Dictators and Disciples from Caesar to Stalin. The latter looks specifically at Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, Maximilien Robespierre, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The psychoanalyst Frank M. Lachmann describes Bychowski as not being a traditional Freudian: "Here was a Freudian analyst who was clearly more interested in connecting with the patient and finding areas of strength than in demonstrating how clever he could be in eliciting psychopathology". Lachmann writes that Bychowski eventually adopted similar views to that of Heinz Kohut.