Leon Wurmser

Who is Leon Wurmser?

Léon Wurmser is an internationally known psychoanalyst, now Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at West Virginia University and a training and supervising analyst of the New York Freudian Society. He was formerly Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Program at University of Maryland, Baltimore. Wurmser was born in 1931 in Zurich, Switzerland. He currently resides in Towson, Maryland, where he maintains a private practice. He supervises many colleagues in the United States and in Europe in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. He lectures widely throughout Europe and is an honorary member of a number of psychoanalytic societies in Germany and in Austria.

Wurmser has authored more than 350 scientific papers, 15 books, and numerous book chapters and essays. His works deal with issues of masochism and depression, focusing on problems of shame, guilt, resentment, and the "archaic superego," both in the individual and in culture, religion, and history. He has written a number of papers and one book on Judaism: "The World of Ideas and Values of Judaism: A Psychoanalytic View".