Return of the ancestor

This book is an exposition and critical interpretation of the life and works of Leopold Szondi (1893-1986), an eminent Swiss psychiatrist who was the first to synthesize heredity and personality development within a multigenerational perspective. He discovered genotropism, the familial unconscious, paroxysmal pattern of the epilepsies, emergence of the ancestors in therapy, and the Cain complex. A native of Hungarian Jewry and a Holocaust survivor, he formulated a transpersonal theory of religion in dialogue with the Bible, Rabbinic Judaism, and the history of religions. This study is based upon extensive, untranslated literature, dealing with psychiatry, behavioral biology, and the humanities.