Ernst Kris

Who was Ernst Kris?

Ernst Kris was an Austrian psychoanalyst and art historian. Kris was the son of Leopold Kris, a lawyer, and Rosa Schick.

Born in Vienna, Austria in 1900, died in New York City, New York in 1957.

Kris not only practiced as a psychoanalyst, he also worked as an art historian and published articles on art history. As a psychoanalyst, he made some important contributions to the psychology of the artist and the psychoanalytic interpretation of works of art and caricature. In the review Imago he published his first psychoanalytic study, "Ein geisteskranker Bildhauer" on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

During the end of the 1910s and the beginning of the 1920s, Kris studied at the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna. One of the professors was Emanuael Loewy, a friend of Sigmund Freud.

In 1927 Kris married Marianne Rie, the daughter of another friend of Freud, Oscar Rie. They had two children. Kris and his wife both became psychoanalysts and Kris began to publish psychoanalytic papers.

A year later, in 1928, Kris intensified his working relationship with Freud, and he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.