Rainer Krause

Rainer Krause (born October 5, 1942, in Gemmrigheim, Germany) is a German psychologist, psychoanalyst and researcher of human emotions.

[3] In 1985, as part of funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Rainer Krause organized the second European Conference on the Exploration of Facial Expressions.

This marks the beginning of his extensive research and public recognition in the areas of affect and emotion and the question of how they find their manifestation in the facial expressions of people.

[citation needed] Rainer Krause concentrated his diverse scientific activities on research of emotions and established himself in various professional societies in psychoanalysis.

He completed a total of five projects funded by the German Research Foundation that focused on exchanges of emotions between healthy and mentally ill groups.

Together with others he founded the Erasmus Programme for emotion research at the universities of Amsterdam, Bologna, Geneva, Paris, Madrid, Manchester and Würzburg.

As co-founder of the Saarland Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, established in 1991, he continues to work there as lecturer, training analyst and supervisor.

Although being critical of psychoanalysis, it is the theoretical basis of his research and treatment methods due to his belief that the "essence of the theory is indispensable".

Accurate knowledge of the involved facial muscles – Krause calls it the "pattern of innervation" – allows to identify which emotion is brought into a communicative situation, such as in a conversation, a lecture or a discussion.

As the "most common emotions that you get to see", Krause is calling contempt and disgust, which is likely to be contrary to the everyday theories of laypersons in affect-psychology.

[10] For Rainer Krause's 65th birthday in 2007 Tom Levold of the System Magazine summarizes some of the research results: "It is argued and substantiated by the empirical material that one can explain the persistence of mental disorders in part by the unconscious micro-affective behavior of mentally ill persons that brings their normal partners to confirm their unconscious assumptions about themselves and the world.

"[13] Harald Weilnböck cites in his book review of empirical research in psychoanalysis "the level of 'unconscious affective adaptation' that involuntarily takes place in all interactions.