弗雷德里克·魏特汉

弗雷德里克·魏特汉（德语：Fredric Wertham，1895年3月20日—1981年11月18日）是一位有犹太血统的德裔美籍精神病学家，同时也是一位改革作家，积极抗议大众传媒和漫画上据称对儿童成长有害的暴力画面。他最广为人知的著作《纯真的诱惑》，直接导致了美国国会对漫画产业的调查以及漫画准则管理局的创建。他将电视称为“暴力的学校”，并说：“如果我在一条黑暗的小巷里遇到了一个不守规矩的年轻人，我希望他并没有看过《我俩没有明天》（一部改编自美国著名鸳鸯大盗邦妮和克莱德的真实故事的动作片）。”

个人简介

魏特汉1895年3月20日生于慕尼黑。他在德国和英国学习医学，之后与弗洛伊德一样，选择了精神病学为专业。1922年，他受邀到美国马里兰州巴尔的摩的约翰斯·霍普金斯医院加入精神病门诊部。他于1927年加入美国籍。1932年，他移居纽约，指导与纽约地方刑事法庭相关的一家精神病诊所，对被定罪的犯人进行精神病测试。1935年，魏特汉在亚伯特·费雪的审判中作出对他有利的证词，宣称费雪是一名精神病患者。

遗产

他的论文（包括未出版著作《儿童战争》(The War on Children)的手稿）都被赠与美国国会图书馆，放置在手稿专区。2010年5月20日起，这批论文开放给学者用于研究用途。

Fredric Wertham (born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, German: [vɛʁtˌhaɪmɐ], March 20, 1895 – November 18, 1981) was a German–American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue Clinic at a time of heightened discrimination in urban mental health practice. Wertham also authored a definitive textbook on the brain, and his institutional stressor findings were cited when courts overturned multiple segregation statutes, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education.

Despite this, Wertham remains best known for his concerns about the effects of violent imagery in mass media and the effects of comic books on the development of children. His best-known book is Seduction of the Innocent (1954), which asserted that comic books caused youth to become delinquents. Besides Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham also wrote articles and testified before government inquiries into comic books, most notably as part of a U.S. Congressional inquiry into the comic book industry. Wertham's work, in addition to the 1954 comic book hearings, led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, although later scholars cast doubt on his observations.

Early life

Wertham was born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer on March 20, 1895, in Nuremberg to the middle-class Jewish family of Sigmund and Mathilde Wertheimer. He was the brother of the psychiatrist Ida Macalpine, maternal uncle of the humanitarian Nicholas Winton, and double first cousin of the writer Ella Winter. He did not change his name legally to Fredric Wertham until 1927. He studied at King's College London, at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the University of Erlangen, and graduated with an M.D. degree from the University of Würzburg in 1921. He was very much influenced by Emil Kraepelin, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and worked briefly at the Kraepelin Clinic in Munich in 1922. Kraepelin emphasized the effects of environment and social background on psychological development. Around this time Wertham corresponded and visited with Sigmund Freud, who influenced him in his choice of psychiatry as his specialty.

Career

In 1922, he accepted an invitation to come to the United States and work under Adolf Meyer at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He became a United States citizen and married the sculptor Florence Hesketh in 1927. He moved to New York City in 1932 to accept a senior staff position at the Bellevue Mental Hygiene Clinic, the psychiatric clinic connected with the New York Court of General Sessions in which all convicted felons received a psychiatric examination that was used in court. In 1935 he testified for the defense in the trial of cannibalistic child rapist and serial killer Albert Fish, declaring him insane. In 1946, Wertham opened the Lafargue Clinic in the basement of St. Philip's Church in Harlem, a low-cost psychiatric clinic specializing in the treatment of Black teenagers. The clinic was financed by voluntary contributions.

Seduction of the Innocent and Senate hearings

Seduction of the Innocent described overt or covert depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and other adult fare within "crime comics"—a term Wertham used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time but also superhero and horror comics as well—and asserted, based largely on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children.