Minkowski, Eugene

   (1885–1972)

   One of the cofounders of the movement "Évolution psychiatrique" in France, Minkowski was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, of Jewish-Lithuanian parents. The family moved to Warsaw when he was 7, and he began medical school there, finishing his studies in philosophy and medicine in Munich in 1909. At the outbreak of the First World War, Minkowski moved to Zurich to study with Eugen Bleuler and became interested in schizophrenia, which he interpreted as "a loss of vital contact with reality." Migrating then to France in 1915 in the middle of the war, he enlisted in the French army and saw combat at the Somme and Verdun. Rewarded with French citizenship , as well as a Croix de Guerre and membership in the Legion of Honor, he decided to settle in Paris. There, he served as staff physician at the Rothschild hospital and was in charge of the psychotherapy service at the Henri-Rousselle hospital (part of Ste.-Anne mental hospital complex). In 1925, Minkowski became one of the founders of the journal L’Évolution psychiatrique, the organ of the vaguely pro-psychoanalytic group of the same title, that had as its philosophical underpinnings the writings of Henri Bergson (1859–1941), as well as Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) doctrine of phenomenology. Minkowski’s was one of the branches of phenomenological analysis, dedicated to understanding phenomena through immediate experience. In psychiatry, this pointed toward psychoanalysis and toward spending much time interviewing patients and endeavoring to achieve empathy. When Aubrey Lewis visited Paris in 1937, he said of the Évolution psychiatrique group: "Most of the more progressive people now seem to be associated with this group. . . . They take a broad psychiatric view. Minkowski himself seems still to be the most potent influence in maintaining this desirable emphasis on the broader medical aspects of psychopathology, and his strong philosophic bent gives depth to the general studies carried on by the group" (Angel, Report, p. 80). Minkowski’s own phenomenological analysis of schizophrenia appeared as a book in 1923 (Étude psychologique et analyse phénoménologique d’un cas de mélancholie schizophrénique). Minkowski wore the yellow armband of the Jews during the Second World War but was not deported, and after the war, he resumed his activity in the group.