After completing his medical studies, he became deeply interested in philology and linguistics. He spoke five languages, read several others, and even psychoanalyzed some patients in English.
From 1901-04 he worked as an assistant at the Berlin Municipal Asylum. While serving as an assistant to the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital in Zürich (1904–07), Abraham met the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and was introduced to the ideas of Sigmund Freud.
He entered psychoanalytic practice in Berlin (1907), where he helped to establish the first branch of the International Psychoanalytic Institute (1910).
Abraham was the first psychoanalyst in Germany, where he brought about a great flourishing of psychoanalysis. His clinical-theoretical contributions quickly became classics that have powerfully influenced the development of psychoanalytic theory.
His first psychoanalytic paper, presented in 1907, was entitled “Über die Bedeutung sexueller Jugendträumen für die Symptomatologie der Dementia Praecox” (“On the Significance of Sexual Trauma in Childhood for the Symptomatology of Dementia Praecox”).
His work on dreams enriched the understanding of myths and symbols, and he was a pioneer of the study of war neuroses.
Abraham was fascinated by the various stages of psychosexual development, suggesting greater differentiation in libido development and postulating the connection between disturbance in psychosexual development and psychosis.
With the 1912-13 Zürich dissensions of Jung and others, Abraham became a member of the Inner Committee (see Freud chronology, 1912). He performed medical service in the First World War and, along with Ernst Simmel, (1882-1947), would develop postwar treatment for sufferers of so-called "war neuroses."
Karl Abraham - German psychoanalyst
