On behalf of the German Psychoanalytical Association
Lisa Werthmann-Resch (Vice President)
March 2025
Obituary for Hermann Beland 1933 ✝ 2025
On behalf of the German Psychoanalytical Association, I would like to announce the death of Herman Beland, who was our chairman from 1988-1990 and an honorary member of the DPV. Hermann Beland sadly passed away on February 10, 2025, in Berlin at the age of 92, surrounded by his family, to whom we extend our deepest sympathy.
In him we have lost an extraordinary psychoanalytic colleague, innovative thinker and creative writer who enjoyed a great national and international reputation.
After the war, Hermann Beland studied theology and became a Protestant pastor. His desire for self-knowledge and his interest in understanding and exploring the life of the soul led him to turn to psychoanalysis and to work as an analyst in his own practice from 1965.
We have great respect for his special commitment to coming to terms with the crimes of the Nazi era as a mediator between Germans and Jews, and for the international recognition he received. As a founding member of PCCA (Partners in confronting collective atrocities) in 2007, to which he remained deeply committed throughout his life, and as a member of the PCCA Board of Directors until his retirement in 2016, he made a special contribution to this necessary reappraisal (“Fed with tears -Poisoned with milk. The “Nazareth”-Group-Relations-Conferences”. Germans and Israelis – The Past in the Present, 2009). In 2019, PCCA received the Sigourney Award: one of the most prestigious prizes in international psychoanalysis (IPA). Hermann Beland was also a member of the IPA Committee on Prejudice (including anti-Semitism). One of his important contributions here was: “Collective mourning: who or what frees a collective to mourn?” (In: Hostile and Malignant Prejudice. Psychoanalytic Approaches, 2015). Finally, one of his great merits is the rapprochement between the DPV and the DPG against the background of our common history.
In his book “Thinking and Doing”, published in 2008, he described his cognitive process as follows: “My theoretical clarification of therapeutic processes consisted in examining the results of unconscious noesis [...] as the primacy of unconscious 'beliefs', as meaning in the broadest sense. Therapy consists in changing unconsciously dominant beliefs - changing structures of meaning in the broadest sense.”
Hermann Beland became a training analyst and chaired the DPV's Central Training Committee from 1976 to 1980, an essential committee responsible for psychoanalytic training and the promotion of psychoanalytic science as one of the DPV's main goals. Throughout his life, Hermann Beland strove to counter the "human instinct of aggression and self-destruction" with the other of the "two 'heavenly forces', the eternal Eros", as Freud wrote in his work "Civilisation and its Discontents" (1929/30), for which he considered the analysis of the former to be an indispensable prerequisite. In 1988, Hermann Beland delivered one of the keynote addresses at the IPA Congress in Montreal, entitled "Finite and Infinite Analysis”, which was widely acclaimed. In addition to his psychoanalytic-scientific interests, which included broad areas of art and culture, he trained generations of psychoanalysts in his function as a training analyst, supervisor and lecturer, and had a lasting influence on the psychoanalytic identity of many trainees, which was conveyed by his deeply humanistic attitude.
I would like to mention his three volumes of psychoanalytic essays on theory, clinic and society as representative of the large number of his scientific research and publications: - 2008: The Anxiety of Thinking and Doing; 2011: Unbearability and most recently 2020: Passionate listening to nameless fear.
On November 22, 2018, at the fall DPV-conference in Bad Homburg, Hermann Beland was awarded honorary membership for his outstanding services to the DPV. He thus received the highest possible recognition and appreciation for his work that the DPV can bestow.
It is with sadness, great gratitude and humility that we bow to Hermann Beland and will honor his memory.
Announcement of Hermann Beland’s Death
Friends and supporters of PCCA
I am sad to inform you that Hermann Beland passed away last night, surrounded by his family.
Hermann Beland was a key figure in the inception and shaping of PCCA. He was an integral part of the creation and launching of the German-Israeli Group Relations Conferences, known as the Nazareth Conferences in Germany. He approached this initiative with little knowledge of the Group Relations approach but with a deeply felt concern for the impact of the Holocaust on his German colleagues and social fabric, and a sincere desire to understand and contribute to their Israeli-Jewish counterparts. His dedication to this project led to his participation in OFEK Group Relations Conferences to enable him to take up staff roles in the projected conferences. Together with Rafael Moses and me, he played an essential role in the exchange and deliberation with Eric Miller that led to the special design of the German-Israeli conferences and became the eventual working modality of PCCA. When PCCA was created in 2007 he was one of its founders and served as an influential Board Member until he retired from it in 2016.
Hermann Beland’s contributions to PCCA and the German-Israeli relationship was set against a rich background of humane concern, religion, and deeply held psychoanalytic principles. He studied theology but eventually chose psychoanalysis and became a leading figure in German psychoanalysis. He served as president of the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV), supervised and taught in Germany and abroad, and published prolifically on psychoanalytic subjects.
I will highlight two of his published books that illustrate his involvement in PCCA and his deeply held connection between psychoanalysis and societal concerns: Fed with Tears, Poisoned with Milk. The “Nazareth” Group-Relations-Conferences: Germans and Israelis: The Past in the Present (with Shmuel Erlich and Mira Erlich-Ginor) [Gestillt Mit Tränen – Vergiftet Mit Milch (German Edition)] and: Die Angst vor Denken und Tun:
Psychoanalytische Aufsätze zu Theorie, Klinik und Gesellschaft [The Fear of Thinking and Doing: Psychoanalytic Essays on Theory, Clinic, and Society].
Hermann Beland was an outstanding thinker, a great teacher, a dedicated healer, a courageous leader, and above all – a dear friend. He will be sorely missed.
Our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and all those who benefited from his presence.
Shmuel Erlich
Chair, PCCA