Karl Abraham, a German psychoanalyst and doctor, was born May 3, 1877, and died December 25, 1925, in Berlin. The son of Nathan Abraham, a businessman, and Ida Oppenheim, he was the youngest of two sons in an Orthodox Jewish family. After studying medicine in Würzburg, Berlin, and Freiburg-im-Breisgau, he married his cousin Hedwig Bürgner in 1906. They had two children; his daughter was the well-known psychoanalyst Hilda Abraham.

Abraham began his training in psychiatry in Berlin, then in Zurich with Eugen Bleuler, where the physician-in-chief was Carl Gustav Jung. It was here that he became familiar with Freud's writings. In 1907 he opened an office in Berlin and, in 1910, founded the Berlin Institute of Psychoanalysis. From 1914 to 1918 he was mobilized as chief physician in a psychiatric unit. It was during this time that he grew interested in studying war neuroses. He was president of the International Psychoanalytic...