Martti Siirala Quotes

Martti Olavi Siirala was a Finnish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and philosopher. He was inspired by psychoanalysis, the anthropological medicine of Viktor von Weizsäcker and the existential philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The outcome was a unique synthesis theory that Siirala called social pathology.

Siirala studied psychoanalysis in Zürich under the guidance of Medard Boss and Gustav Bally. There he met also colleague and lifetime friend Gaetano Benedetti. Siirala was also the founding member of Finnish Therapeia-foundation, an alternative psychoanalytic training institute established 1958. Especially in the early years Siirala was actually the principal of the foundation, both at a theoretical and practical level.

✵ 18. December 1889 – 10. April 1948

Martti Siirala: 2 quotes0 likes

Martti Siirala Quotes

“The day has not only passed, it has long since passed, when we could visualize a healthy psychiatrist confronting a sick patient.”

Medicine in Metamorphosis (2003).

“A defect, as such, does not imply determinations in any direction. The individual's happiness is in the continuous unfolding of his experience, and also in the fruitfulness of his suffering. The criterion of his happiness is his power and permission to grow into his own self, with all that this involves. This, in turn, depends on other circumstances; the reality or mere ostensibility of his reception; the degree to which he is allowed, together with his defects and inherited birth constellations, to be integrated into his community; and the degree to which the community is permitted to become integrated into what he, the individual, represents.”

Medicine in Metamorphosis (2003).

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