Louis Zinkin

Louis Maurice Zinkin (1925 April 24, 1925 – 13 March 1993) was a British analytical psychologist. Earlier in life he had been a ship's surgeon, a physician, a child psychiatrist and Consultant Psychotherapist at St George's Hospital, London. He had the distinction of being a Group Analyst alongside individual and couple work and was the author of many papers and books.

Biography With a scholarly Jewish ancestry founded in Russian occupied Poland, Zinkin's grandfather, Jacob, escaped the oppressive Pale of Settlement and found sanctuary in 19th century England. After attending City of London School, Louis progressed to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he discovered the writings of Carl Jung while studying medicine. He gained his MD in London and set off for the Far East on board ship. On his return to the UK he worked in several hospitals working his way through medical rotations and specialisms. While at Napsbury Hospital, he trained as an analytical psychologist and rose to becoming honorary senior lecturer at St George's Hospital at Hyde Park Corner and Chairman of the Medical Committee of the British Psychological Society.

Influence As well as an abiding involvement in music, he took up the piano in mid-life, Louis Zinkin viewed the arts through the prism of his clinical reading and work and produced a study of the characters in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice following the release of Luchino Visconti's film. He was galvanised to think about the themes, such as pedophilia and Jung's concept of individuation, evoked by the novella in a number of his patients who reported seeing the film based on it, and the effects it had on them. His original (1991) contribution to the debate on the nature of the self reverberates in discussions decades after his death. Much like Jung's, Zinkin's attitude was characterised by the idea of a search, whether as a thinker, therapist, teacher or committee member. A Gnostic View of the Therapy Group (1989) Dialogue in the Analytic Setting: Selected Papers of Louis Zinkin on Jung and on Group Analysis (1998) The Psyche and the Social World with the psychologist, Dennis Brown (2000) Your Self: did you find it or did you make it? (1991/2008)