Georg Walther Groddeck (13 October 1866 in Bad Kösen – 10 June 1934 in Knonau, near Zurich) was a physician and writer regarded as a pioneer of psychosomatic medicine. Early life Groddeck was born in a Lutheran family. His works before World War I wholly accepted eugenics and Völkisch movement ideology. Publications In 1902 Groddeck published his first book, Ein Frauenproblem, dedicated to his wife; in 1909, the book Hin zu Gottnatur was released. In 1913 he published (The healthy and the sick person), where "nasamecu" stands for the Latin motto "Natura sanat, medicus curat" Here Groddeck offers his understanding of what happens to the bones, muscles, the importance of food, talk about blood circulation, the eyes, the whole human body and what happens to this body when it obeys the orders of Isso (unconscious). According to these orders, a person becomes "healthy" or "sick." In 1921 Groddeck published his first psychoanalytic novel, Der Seelensucher. Ein psychoanalytischer Roman, later published in English as "The Seeker of Souls". After reading it and promoting its publication Freud commended Groddeck to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Association. Alfred Polgar in his comprehensive review (Berliner Tageblatt, 20 December 1921) found "nothing comparable among German books" and felt reminded of Cervantes, Swift, Rabelais. In 1923 he published Das Buch vom Es, an unusual work in which each chapter is in the form of a letter to a girlfriend addressed as "my dear". Association with Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis In his introduction to the 1949 English version of Groddeck's Das Buch vom Es (1923), Lawrence Durrell comments that Groddeck is often mistaken for an orthodox disciple of Sigmund Freud. He goes on to say "Groddeck was the only analyst whose views had some effect on Freud", and "while he accepts and employs much of the heavy equipment of the master, he is separated forever from Freud by an entirely different conception of the constitution and functioning of the human psyche." Freud mentions Groddeck in The Ego and the Id, crediting him with giving a name to what Freud had already given a local habitation, to wit, the Id. Now I think we shall gain a great deal by following the suggestion of a writer who, from personal motives, vainly asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours of pure science. I am speaking of Georg Groddeck, who is never tired of insisting that what we call