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A physician and [[training ]] [[analyst]], Rudolph M. Loewenstein was [[born ]] in Lodz, [[Poland]], on January 17, 1898, and died in New York on April 14, 1976.

Born into a [[Jewish ]] [[family]], Loewenstein attended secondary [[school ]] in Zurich, then pursued studies in [[medicine ]] and [[neurology ]] in Berlin, where he trained at the [[Psychoanalytic ]] Institute (1923-1925). He was [[analyzed ]] by Hanns Sachs, and probably worked under the supervision of Max Eitingon. He was admitted as a member of the [[German ]] Psychoanalytic [[Society ]] (DPG) and in 1925 became an assistant at the outpatient [[clinic]], where he gained [[recognition ]] as a young and brilliant training analyst.

Eitingon then recommended Loewenstein to René Laforgue to train [[other ]] [[analysts]]. A polyglot, capable of expressing himself with equal fluency in [[Polish]], German, [[English]], and [[French]], he had no difficulty practicing [[analysis ]] in the various countries in which he was to live. He settled in [[Paris ]] as a training analyst in 1925 and trained the first generation of analyzed analysts. In 1926 he participated, along with Laforgue, Eugénie Sokolnicka, [[Marie Bonaparte]], and [[others]], in the creation of the [[Société psychanalytique de Paris ]] (SPP, Paris Psychoanalytic Society) and became the society's secretary. He also contributed, in 1927, to the creation of the Revue française de la [[psychanalyse]], financed by Bonaparte, through whom he met Sigmund [[Freud ]] several [[times]]. He became a naturalized French [[citizen ]] in 1930 and resumed his studies, earning baccalaureate and doctorate degrees in medicine; the [[defense ]] of his [[thesis]], "La conception psychanalytique des troubles de la puissance génitale chez l'[[homme]]" (The psychoanalytic conception of [[male ]] [[sexual ]] impotency), in 1935, was presided over by Professor Claude Henri. He was director of a psychoanalytic [[seminar ]] at the SPP until 1939; that year he was mobilized as a doctor in the French [[army]], where he was decorated with the Croix de Guerre. After the armistice of 1940 he took refuge in Marseilles, where he practiced and taught [[psychoanalysis ]] up until his departure for the [[United States ]] in 1942.

[[Forced ]] into exile, he settled in New York in 1943, maintaining his institutional and personal connections with French psychoanalysis, for which he was the New York correspondent. Rapidly recognized as a training analyst, he was soon enlisted to fill all the major institutional functions: president of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute (1950-1952), secretary and then president of the New York Psychoanalytic Society (1959-1961), president of the American Psychoanalytic [[Association ]] from 1957 to 1958, and finally vice president of the [[International Psychoanalytic Association ]] (IPA) from 1965 to 1967.

In 1952 Loewenstein published Christians and [[Jews]]: A [[Psychoanalytical ]] Study (published in French under the title Psychanalyse de l'antisémitisme), but in [[terms ]] of [[theory]], he is mainly known as the cofounder of the new American psychoanalytic school of the 1950s, and for his [[work ]] in ego [[psychology]]; his [[name ]] remains associated with those of Ernst [[Kris ]] and Heinz [[Hartmann]], his collaborators in research. Taking up a point that was indicated in Freud's work, but that he developed into a theory, [[ego psychology]], he gave privileged status to the [[unconscious ]] ego over the [[instinctual ]] [[drives ]] and moved it towards the center of the [[psychic ]] [[system]].

This theory has been called a psychology of [[adaptation]], which Loewenstein was to expound and [[defend ]] in "Rapport sur la [[psychologie ]] psychanalytique de H. Hartmann, E. Kris et R. Loewenstein" (Report on the psychoanalytic psychology of H. Hartmann, E. Kris, and R. Loewenstein), presented to the Twenty-sixth Congress of French-[[speaking ]] [[Psychoanalysts]], held in Paris in 1965. Unanimously criticized in [[Europe]], ego psychology is certainly historically linked to the issue of [[immigration]].

At the end of his [[life ]] Loewenstein was [[working ]] with Milton Horowitz on the theory of psychoanalytic [[technique]], trying to conceptualize his five years of [[practice ]] as a training analyst.

Loewenstein played an important institutional [[role ]] within the psychoanalytic [[community]], not only in the [[three ]] countries where he practiced, but also on an international level (IPA). Jacques [[Lacan ]] underwent an analysis with him—terminated too soon, against the advice of his training analyst. He was also the training analyst for Sacha Nacht, [[Daniel Lagache]], Michel Cénac, Pierre Mâle, Georges Parchemeney, John Leuba, and others. Supervisor and later a friend of Marie Bonaparte, he helped her with her 1935 [[translation ]] of Freud's Five Lectures on [[Psycho]]-Analysis.

See also: [[Abstinence]]/rule of abstinence; Congrèsdespsychanalystes de [[langue ]] française des pays romans; Ego; Ego (ego psychology); [[France]]; [[Libido]]; New York Psychoanalytic Institute; [[Racism]], [[anti-Semitism]], and psychoanalysis; Revue française de psychanalyse; Société psychanalytique de Paris and Institut de psychanalyse de Paris; United States.[[Bibliography]]