Paul Ferdinand Schilder

Paul Ferdinand Schilder (February 15, 1886, Vienna – December 7, 1940, New York City) was an Austrian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and medical researcher.

Schilder's research work in both neurophysiology and neuropathology, coupled with an active interest in philosophy, led to his involvement in psychoanalysis.

Because of his analytic commitments the academic establishment became increasingly hostile towards Schilder, and in 1928 he left the clinic and traveled to Baltimore where he became a guest lecturer for a semester at Johns Hopkins University.

Over the years, Schilder wrote a number of papers developing these formulations, culminating in his book The Image and Appearance of the Human Body, published in 1935, which he esteemed highest among his later works.

[6] The considerations and conclusions in his publications were the result of a carefully thorough analysis of practically just a few of his own cases, including histological-neuropathological tests, as well as a systematic and critical study of the related specialist literature.

[9] Schilder wrote a series of articles in the thirties on the psychoanalysis of space, time and geometry,[10] later subsumed into chapters of his 1942 book Mind.

Otto Fenichel expressed doubts as to "whether the authors who, like Schilder, believed in purely psychoanalytic effects in group therapy were not in error about what they themselves were doing".