Kurt Robert Eissler (2 July 1908 – 17 February 1999) was an Austrian psychoanalyst and a scholar and archivist of the work and life of Sigmund Freud.
His first psychoanalytic contribution, an article on early female development, was published in 1939, to be followed by others on anorexia nervosa and shock treatment.
Eissler provided a spirited defense of the death drive,[3] and introduced the term "parameter" to codify deviations from pure interpretation in the Freudian tradition.
[5] He also considered that some forms of regression were of benefit to the artist in enabling them to break out of "the traditional pattern that he has been forced to integrate through the identifications necessitated and enforced by the oedipal constellation".
[9] Janet Malcolm described Eissler as a "singular mixture of brilliance, profundity, originality, and moral beauty on the one hand, and willfulness, stubbornness, impetuosity, and maddening guilelessness on the other".