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Obituary
Eric Ledermann remained in good health
until 7th May 2005 when he died suddenly
and peacefully. I wrote the following obituary
for him and a slightly shortened version
of it appeared in The Times on
June 15, 2005. (B.K.)
ERIC
LEDERMANN (16 May 1908 - 7 May
2005) :
Pioneer of Holistic Medicine and
True Self Psychotherapy.
Medical approaches
that differ from the orthodox, conventional
scientific approach have been described
as ‘alternative’, ‘complementary’ and ‘fringe’ as
well as ‘holistic’. Orthodox
medicine chooses to make objective scientific
diagnoses and use specific treatments for
specific diseases. These treatments have
been verified by having gone through the
industry standard trial of fire, the clinical
double blind crossover trial. Alternative
medicine may often eschew such trials claiming
they are unsuitable for their particular
approach which is less inclined to separate
body and mind. In essence this is is a
philosophical issue but few doctors or
alternative practitioners have studied
philosophy of science. In this respect,
Dr. Eric Karl Ledermann was very different.
The son of Jewish
parents, his father a respected Berlin
general practitioner, Ledermann was born
in 1908. He went through a classical
education culminating in his qualification
as a doctor at the University of Freiburg.
Even as a medical student he expressed
an interest in vitalism – something
he was strongly advised to keep quiet about.
He also once attended a lecture by the
psychoanalyst, Alfred Adler who influenced
his early ideas about psychiatry. As a
young doctor working in a paediatric hospital
he encountered the Nazis for the first
time. He inadvertently picked up a telephone
directory only to see a small black book
beneath it. The Nazi officer who owned
the book wanted to arrest him but was dissuaded
from doing so by Ledermann’s non-Jewish
consultant, a man he later credited for
saving his life. This incident proved the
catalyst for him to leave Germany for good
never to return. He finally managed to
persuade the rest of his family to leave
in 1939 and the Ledermann family thus avoided
the worst of the Holocaust.
A fellow medical
student had emigrated to Scotland and
invited the young Ledermann to join him
in Edinburgh. He requalified as a doctor
in Edinburgh and was then drawn to study
homeopathy at the Glasgow Homeopathic
Hospital. Around this time Ledermann had
read Smuts’s Holism and Evolution.
This was the first usage of the word ‘holism’ and
he immediately recognised its significance
in medicine. Smuts applied the term to
the universe but Ledermann, a student of
Kant, would see holism as mainly in the
mind. His attraction to homeopathy
was clearly due to homeopathic medicines
being chosen to suit the ‘whole’ of
a patient as well as his disease. He became
a respected fellow and teacher of the Faculty
of Homeopathy and its most long serving
member. He also studied acupuncture
and naturopathy including the therapeutic
effects of fasting and although his early
books were on treating the body holistically
with these modalities, his great loves
in medicine would become psychiatry, philosophy
and ethics.
Dr. Ledermann believed
that every doctor needed to have an ethical
code by which to practise medicine on
a daily basis. Doctors who eschewed philosophy
as being unnecessary in medicine, he
described as practising medicine according
to a philosophy of ‘naïve realism’. He
believed that all doctors needed to be
skilled to some degree in psychiatry as
much of the suffering encountered in all
areas of medicine was psychogenic in origin.
He strived tirelessly to provide the profession
with a straightforward approach to patients
that was holistic in principle and practicable
in everyday medicine. The development of
his particular philosophy in medicine was
certainly influenced by Kant, but the existential
psychiatrist and philosopher, Karl Jaspers
was a big influence. He respected many
of Freud’s views but in the end thought
that Freud (like everyone before and after
him) had been bound to fail in their quest
to create a ‘science of the mind’.
Ledermann was able
to describe his approach, which he termed
True Self Psychotherapy, simply: ‘The aim of psychotherapy
is to make the unconscious conscience of
the patient conscious’. That people
own such a conscience was axiomatic to
his philosophy although he admitted that
this conscience was absent in psychopaths
and that psychotic people could be limited
in their ability to access their conscience.
In other words the answers to people’s
problems was already within them. It was
the job of a psychotherapist to help them
get in touch with their conscience and
then have the courage to act accordingly.
In this way he saw neurosis mainly as a
moral issue. In the 1960’s he sometimes
used LSD legally to help patients who had
become ‘stuck’ in therapy but
gave it up when the drug became classified.
Instead he used deep relaxation techniques
such as Autogenic Therapy and reverie to
achieve the same purpose.
He wrote several books on an holistic
approach to physical problems (Good
Health through Natural Therapy and Whole
Person Medicine) but his major works
in which he espoused his unique contribution
to medicine were Philosophy and Medicine
(1970) and Existential Neurosis. His website, www.wholepersonmedicine.co.uk lists
his many publications. He went on to describe
his uniquely optimistic and eminently practicable
form of existential psychotherapy in Existential
Neurosis (1973) and in a number of other
books and journal articles.
Ledermann, never
a man for trivialities has been described
as never ‘having
a petty thought in his head’. Unlike
many, he rigorously applied his philosophy
in his personal life. A lifelong vegetarian
he exercised regularly, struggled with
ethical issues on a daily basis and was
a rock of stability to his many patients.
At the time of his death he was still seeing
a few patients, reading journals and constantly
concerned about the state of medicine in
our society. In his nineties he received
an honorary degree in traditional Chinese
medicine.
His marriage to his beloved Marjorie lasted
until they were both in their 90s. He is
survived by a son and daughter.
Eric Karl Ledermann
Born: Berlin 16/5/1908
Died:
London 7/5/2005
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