Paul Schiff—French physician, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and neuropsychiatrist known for his work with prisoners—was born in Vienna on August 5, 1891, and died in Paris on May 17, 1947.

Though Austrian by birth, Schiff was culturally French. His father, a foreign correspondent for an Austrian newspaper, settled in Paris when his son was a month old. At the Collège de France, Schiff studied philosophy and was especially influenced by Henri Bergson's lectures on Spinoza (1632-1677). He subsequently studied medicine. During World War I, Schiff, not a French citizen but unwilling to fight in the Austrian army, moved to Switzerland, where he became friends with the novelist Romain Rolland and the poet Pierre-Jean Jouve. Returning to France, he interned in psychiatry at the Asiles de la Seine (Asylums of the Seine) and later served as chief of the psychiatric clinic at Sainte-Anne Hospital in 1927. He married Suzanne Wertheimer,...