Obituary: Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Horst Kächele, Ulm, a messenger of empirical research in psychoanalysis (born 18 February1944, died 28 June 2020)

Abstract

A young man storms up the wide hotel stairs, almost running over his friend and his girlfriend -"Are you from Zurich? Are there analysts there who are willing to tape-record their psychoanalytic sessions?"; it gushes right out of him. "Why don't you ask Horst Kächele from Ulm, he has thousands of tapes … ," I replied, just as spontaneously. "This Kächele is me myself … ," Horst said laughing.In this way began decades of friendship and of productive, for me always challenging, cooperations between Horst and myself (M.L.B.) at the Congress of the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV) in Cologne in 1977. I have never forgotten the initial scene of our meeting, becausein retrospectit immediately revealed so much of Horst's personality to me. Horst stormed through life, passionately, unconventionally and sometimes a bit overpoweringly. With an incredible energy, always full of fire and flame for psychoanalytic research, he overcame all the hurdles that stood in his way. Hurdles against tape-recordings of psychoanalytic sessions, which for him were part of a serious process and outcome research in psychoanalysis, are only a tiny example of this (Kächele et al. 1988). He had a great desire to move, to be in motion and to make psychoanalysis move. Therefore the death of this lively friend, researcher and psychoanalyst is particularly difficult to imagine, and particularly painful.After a long and grave illness Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Horst Kächele died on 28 June 2020 surrounded by his family. With his passing, international psychoanalysis loses a pioneer of research in psychoanalysis, a dedicated, pugnacious psychoanalyst and a warm-hearted personality.After studying medicine in Marburg, Leeds and Munich (1963-1969), Horst Kächele accepted an invitation from Helmut Thomä to take up a scientific position in the Depart-