A bit on his background

In January, 1887, an important researcher was born to an affluent Jewish family in Vienna. This man would become one of the first to study the development of the “Id” and “ego.” He would also study the way children, during infancy, developed psychologically.  This man was Rene Arpad Spitz.

            Growing up in Hungry, Spitz went to study medicine in Budapest and after earning a doctorate he came across the works of Sigmund Freud. It was not until later after serving as a military physician that one of his friends suggested that he go be a student of Freud’s. Spitz took his friend’s advice and studied under Dr. Freud.  Within the years 1924 and 1928, Spitz became part of the “German Psychoanalytic Society.”

             Later in life, Spitz moved to France and taught psychoanalysis and the development of children. Even thought he taught these things it was not until he moved to the United States that he did most of his research on child development. When he migrated to the U.S. in 1939 he worked at Mount Sinai Hospital for three years beginning in 1940 as a psychiatrist. After his time working at the hospital, he began teaching at the University in Colorado. Before teaching in Colorado, Dr. Spitz traveled to different universities in the U.S. and it was during this time he published one of his many books entitled Anaclitic Depression: Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (1946). “Anaclitic depression” is a term coined by Spitz that means that there is an attachment withdrawal from the mother. Anaclitic depression refers to another term of Dr. Spitz’, “hospitalism syndrome.” He started studying these children in a founding home in 1945.