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    Germany New Hampshire United States: BLOS, PETER (1904-1997)

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    Maur Macc
    Peter Blos was a German psychoanalyst born in 1904 who made significant contributions to the understanding of adolescence. He studied education and biology, and was introduced to psychoanalysis through his work with Anna Freud. Blos fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1934. His most influential work was On Adolescence, in which he developed the concept of a "second individuation process" during adolescence involving renegotiating separation from parents. Blos is considered an eminent specialist in child and adolescent analysis in the United States.

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    Germany New Hampshire United States: BLOS, PETER (1904-1997)

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    Maur Macc
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    Peter Blos was a German psychoanalyst born in 1904 who made significant contributions to the understanding of adolescence. He studied education and biology, and was introduced to psychoanalysis through his work with Anna Freud. Blos fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1934. His most influential work was On Adolescence, in which he developed the concept of a "second individuation process" during adolescence involving renegotiating separation from parents. Blos is considered an eminent specialist in child and adolescent analysis in the United States.

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    Peter Blos was a German psychoanalyst born in 1904 who made significant contributions to the understanding of adolescence. He studied education and biology, and was introduced to psychoanalysis through his work with Anna Freud. Blos fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1934. His most influential work was On Adolescence, in which he developed the concept of a "second individuation process" during adolescence involving renegotiating separation from parents. Blos is considered an eminent specialist in child and adolescent analysis in the United States.

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    Germany New Hampshire United States: BLOS, PETER (1904-1997)

    Uploaded by

    Maur Macc
    Peter Blos was a German psychoanalyst born in 1904 who made significant contributions to the understanding of adolescence. He studied education and biology, and was introduced to psychoanalysis through his work with Anna Freud. Blos fled Nazi Germany for the United States in 1934. His most influential work was On Adolescence, in which he developed the concept of a "second individuation process" during adolescence involving renegotiating separation from parents. Blos is considered an eminent specialist in child and adolescent analysis in the United States.

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    BLOS, PETER (1904-1997)

    A German psychoanalyst with a degree in education and a


    PhD in biology, Peter Blos was born February 2, 1904, in
    Karlsruhe (Germany), and died June 12, 1997, in
    Holderness, New Hampshire (United States). Blos's childhood
    and adolescence were marked by the spiritual influence of his
    father, a doctor drawn to Gandhi's ideas. Early in life he
    became a friend of Erik Homburger, who later became the
    psychoanalyst Erik Erikson. Blos studied education at the
    University of Heidelberg to become a teacher, and then
    obtained a doctorate in biology in Vienna.

    During the 1920s, he was introduced to Anna Freud, who


    asked his help in creating a school for children undergoing
    analysis. The project was supported and encouraged by Eva
    Rosenfeld and Dorothy Burlingham, a friend of Anna Freud,
    whose children attended the small school. Blos invited Erik
    Homburger to join him there. Within the Vienna
    psychoanalytic circle August Aichhorn exerted considerable
    intellectual influence on Blos, which strongly affected his
    psychoanalytic training. Blos entered psychoanalysis through
    teaching, while giving his work an orientation and sensitivity
    influenced by spirituality.

    To escape the rise of Nazism, Blos fled Vienna in 1934 for


    the United States, where he settled in New Orleans. There he
    was hired as a teacher in a private school, before leaving
    for New York, where he continued his analytic training.
    According to Aaron H. Esman, he became a member of
    the New York Psychoanalytic Society, becoming a special
    member in 1965 and then a supervisor and trainer. As a
    teacher he introduced, in 1972, a course on delayed
    adolescence, which he discontinued in 1977. He continued
    his clinical practice and did some teaching at the Columbia
    Psychoanalytic Center as cofounder of the Association of
    Child Psychoanalysis. When he retired from professional life,
    he spent his time writing poetry and fiction, playing the violin,
    and practicing carpentry in his country home in
    Holderness, New Hampshire. He died there at the age of
    ninety-three, by the side of his second wife.

    Of his four published books, it is On Adolescence: A


    Psychoanalytic Interpretation that led to his national and
    international recognition. This book, supported by his
    extensive clinical experience with adolescents, picks up the
    thread of an idea that Sigmund Freud failed to develop. Freud
    identified the beginning and end of the process of puberty,
    largely ignoring the intermediary stages. Blos decided to
    elucidate the various stages of development of the
    personality, from latency to post-adolescence. His goal was to
    present a unified theory of adolescence, a necessary first
    step in introducing an adolescent-specific psychopathology
    and psychotherapeutic technique. Five years later he
    developed a key concept, inherited from the work of Margaret
    Mahler, the "second individuation process." Here, the
    emphasis is on the importance of renegotiating the separation
    with the parents' imagos during adolescence. The author
    emphasizes the importance of gaining access to regression,
    which, contrary to what occurs in the case of the infant and
    the adult, is tied to the ego.

    The second individuation process is what made Blos well-


    known. His theoretical and clinical approach to the gradual
    development of the personality, delinquency, and the
    problems of the ego (superego, ego ideal, integrative
    capability) also made a significant contribution to
    understanding adolescence. In the United States he is
    considered an eminent specialist, a forerunner of child and
    adolescent analysis, who trained several generations of
    analysts in adolescent psychotherapy.

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