Profile
Margareta Anna Vobruba
Birth:
1951
Training Location(s):
Dr., University of Vienna (1978)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women]
Le Kri – Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung [Association for Life Planning and Crisis Management]
Career Focus:
Psychoanalysis, client-centered psychotherapy, ethnopsychoanalysis, university lecturing, women's and family counseling with special focus on protection against violence.
Biography
Margareta Anna Vobruba is a psychologist and psychotherapist who specializes in women's studies, psychoanalysis and ethnopsychoanalysis. One of her achievements was the founding of important psychosocial institutions in Vienna, including the first Women's Counseling Centre in Austria in 1980, "Frauen beraten Frauen" [Women Counsel Women] and the Family Counseling Centre “Le Kri - Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung” (Association for Life Planning and Crisis Management).
She was born on on July 14, 1951 in Vienna. The foundation on which her feminist convictions would later develop was already laid in her childhood. Contrary to traditional gender roles of the time, Vobruba remembers having been raised as an equal to her older brother: there was no question that both would graduate from high school and study later. With her choice to study psychology, Vobruba followed in the footsteps of her mother, Dr. Olga Kulka, who had earned her doctorate in 1935 under Karl and Charlotte Bühler at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna (Vienna Psychological Institute) and had worked at the "Vienna Business Psychology Research Centre" headed by social scientist Paul F. Lazarsfeld. While her mother was academically trained, her father was not; an unusual constellation at the time. Her mother, as it were, demonstrated to her that traditional role expectations could be broken down. This example of lived emancipation, however, would soon be contradicted by the experiences of her youth. For instance, she found it "incredibly humiliating that you [a woman] had to be asked to dance by a man" and remembers the relief she felt as a young woman when she was finally able to "go on the dance floor myself—it would have been impossible [earlier], completely impossible, to dance when you wanted to"(Vobruba, Interview with F. Knasmüller, 2019). Vobruba describes a rather diffuse sense of injustice that she could not put a label on:
"I couldn't tell anyone, there was no context in which anyone could have understood, I couldn't even express it, I just felt like shit" (Vobruba, Interview with F. Knasmüller , 2019).
The missing context, i.e., a collective from which shared ideas and concepts could emerge, opened up for Vobruba on a Walpurgis night demonstration in 1975/76. They marched through the streets and shouted "tremate tremate le streghe son tornate" ["tremble tremble the witches are back"]. Occupying the public space together with like-minded women, Vobruba felt tremendous elation. The atmosphere exuded a vitality that appealed to her and inspired her. Vobruba describes this experience as an initial spark for her feminist politicization, after which she made her first visit to the so-called "Tendlergasse", the first club of the Austrian autonomous women’s collective "Aktion Unabhängiger Frauen" (AUF).
At the time of her feminist politicization, Vobruba was enrolled in studies of psychology at the University of Vienna, which she completed in 1978 with a dissertation on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. After completing her doctorate, she took part in a so-called young academics’ training, a paid internship offered by the Austrian unemployment agency in order to facilitate academics’ entry into professional life. This led her to the Clinic for Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Vienna, headed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Prof. Hans Strotzka, and later to the Psychosomatics outpatient clinic of the second Women's Clinic at the University of Vienna. There, Vobruba studied and worked under Prof. Marianne Springer-Kremser, a renowned university professor of psychiatry and psychoanalyst and later successor to Strotzka, who would become a mentor to Vobruba. At the Women’s Clinic Vobruba was finally able to combine her interest in psychotherapy with women-specific topics, which had already developed during her studies of psychology as well as in the course of her psychodrama and group dynamics training. She worked on topics of fertility, pregnancy, psychosomatic childlessness, but also on many other aspects of women’s life realities that she would repeatedly encounter in the course of her professional career. Working at the Psychosomatics outpatient clinic significantly changed her path in yet another way as she became close friends with her colleague Marion Breiter. In 1980, together with Margot Scherl, Renate Frotzler-Dietrich, Christine Stromberger and Helga Berger, they founded the first Austrian women's counseling centre Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women], where Vobruba worked until 1987 (with a short interruption after the birth of her first child). Shortly before founding the women’s counseling centre, she had completed her training as a client-centred psychotherapist, which was later followed by training as a psychoanalyst. She has been working as a psychotherapist in her own practice since 1988.
In addition to her work as a psychotherapist and psychosocial counselor, Vobruba worked as a university lecturer, primarily at the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna. From 1984-1985, she offered a course on "Women-Specific Aspects in Psychology and Psychotherapy" under the name of Gretl Scherer. Her teaching at the University of Vienna had been initiated by student representatives who had come across her name in search of a feminist psychologist in the women's counseling center. After a longer research stay in Bali, where she studied the local culture of sacrificial offerings, she resumed her teaching at the University of Vienna on request by students, again with courses on "Differential Psychology: Gender Differences" from 1989-2002 and "Differential Psychology: Gender Studies - Women's Research/Men's Research". Vobruba designed the teaching contents as follows:
"The course on gender differences—so, of course, I expanded the subject and included psychoanalysis, and everything, and ethnology, and ethnopsychoanalysis, and so on, but the course title was somehow very narrow and not according to my understanding of the subject, but I had no say in the title. It was simply called 'Differential Psychology: Gender Differences' (Vobruba, Interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
Such a broad notion of psychology, enriched with and connected to aspects of related disciplines, characterizes her academic as well as her practical work. She was a co-founder and staff member of the Institute for Ethnopsychoanalysis and Cultural Exchange (IEK) and of the family counseling centre "Le Kri - Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung" [Cente for life planning and crisis management], where she was still active in 2020.
By Florian Knasmüller (2019)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Anna Vobruba
Vobruba, A. & Breiter, M. (2020) Freiheit, Gleichheit, Solidarität. In Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.), Freiheit und Feminismen: Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie 40 Jahre Frauen* beraten Frauen* (pp.67-82). Psychosozial Verlag.
By and About Anna Vobruba
Vobruba, A. (2016, October 18) Interview with V. Luckgei [Video Recording].
Vobruba, A. (2019, July 3) Interview with F. Knasmüller [Video Recording].
About Anna Vobruba
Luckgei, V., Ruck, N. & Slunecko, T. (2020). Feminist psychology at the University of Vienna, 1984-2000: A case study of a temporary hub in feminist psychological university teaching. in W. E. Pickren (Ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology.
Margareta Anna Vobruba
Birth:
1951
Training Location(s):
Dr., University of Vienna (1978)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women]
Le Kri – Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung [Association for Life Planning and Crisis Management]
Career Focus:
Psychoanalysis, client-centered psychotherapy, ethnopsychoanalysis, university lecturing, women's and family counseling with special focus on protection against violence.
Biography
Margareta Anna Vobruba is a psychologist and psychotherapist who specializes in women's studies, psychoanalysis and ethnopsychoanalysis. One of her achievements was the founding of important psychosocial institutions in Vienna, including the first Women's Counseling Centre in Austria in 1980, "Frauen beraten Frauen" [Women Counsel Women] and the Family Counseling Centre “Le Kri - Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung” (Association for Life Planning and Crisis Management).
She was born on on July 14, 1951 in Vienna. The foundation on which her feminist convictions would later develop was already laid in her childhood. Contrary to traditional gender roles of the time, Vobruba remembers having been raised as an equal to her older brother: there was no question that both would graduate from high school and study later. With her choice to study psychology, Vobruba followed in the footsteps of her mother, Dr. Olga Kulka, who had earned her doctorate in 1935 under Karl and Charlotte Bühler at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna (Vienna Psychological Institute) and had worked at the "Vienna Business Psychology Research Centre" headed by social scientist Paul F. Lazarsfeld. While her mother was academically trained, her father was not; an unusual constellation at the time. Her mother, as it were, demonstrated to her that traditional role expectations could be broken down. This example of lived emancipation, however, would soon be contradicted by the experiences of her youth. For instance, she found it "incredibly humiliating that you [a woman] had to be asked to dance by a man" and remembers the relief she felt as a young woman when she was finally able to "go on the dance floor myself—it would have been impossible [earlier], completely impossible, to dance when you wanted to"(Vobruba, Interview with F. Knasmüller, 2019). Vobruba describes a rather diffuse sense of injustice that she could not put a label on:
"I couldn't tell anyone, there was no context in which anyone could have understood, I couldn't even express it, I just felt like shit" (Vobruba, Interview with F. Knasmüller , 2019).
The missing context, i.e., a collective from which shared ideas and concepts could emerge, opened up for Vobruba on a Walpurgis night demonstration in 1975/76. They marched through the streets and shouted "tremate tremate le streghe son tornate" ["tremble tremble the witches are back"]. Occupying the public space together with like-minded women, Vobruba felt tremendous elation. The atmosphere exuded a vitality that appealed to her and inspired her. Vobruba describes this experience as an initial spark for her feminist politicization, after which she made her first visit to the so-called "Tendlergasse", the first club of the Austrian autonomous women’s collective "Aktion Unabhängiger Frauen" (AUF).
At the time of her feminist politicization, Vobruba was enrolled in studies of psychology at the University of Vienna, which she completed in 1978 with a dissertation on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. After completing her doctorate, she took part in a so-called young academics’ training, a paid internship offered by the Austrian unemployment agency in order to facilitate academics’ entry into professional life. This led her to the Clinic for Depth Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Vienna, headed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Prof. Hans Strotzka, and later to the Psychosomatics outpatient clinic of the second Women's Clinic at the University of Vienna. There, Vobruba studied and worked under Prof. Marianne Springer-Kremser, a renowned university professor of psychiatry and psychoanalyst and later successor to Strotzka, who would become a mentor to Vobruba. At the Women’s Clinic Vobruba was finally able to combine her interest in psychotherapy with women-specific topics, which had already developed during her studies of psychology as well as in the course of her psychodrama and group dynamics training. She worked on topics of fertility, pregnancy, psychosomatic childlessness, but also on many other aspects of women’s life realities that she would repeatedly encounter in the course of her professional career. Working at the Psychosomatics outpatient clinic significantly changed her path in yet another way as she became close friends with her colleague Marion Breiter. In 1980, together with Margot Scherl, Renate Frotzler-Dietrich, Christine Stromberger and Helga Berger, they founded the first Austrian women's counseling centre Frauen beraten Frauen [Women Counsel Women], where Vobruba worked until 1987 (with a short interruption after the birth of her first child). Shortly before founding the women’s counseling centre, she had completed her training as a client-centred psychotherapist, which was later followed by training as a psychoanalyst. She has been working as a psychotherapist in her own practice since 1988.
In addition to her work as a psychotherapist and psychosocial counselor, Vobruba worked as a university lecturer, primarily at the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna. From 1984-1985, she offered a course on "Women-Specific Aspects in Psychology and Psychotherapy" under the name of Gretl Scherer. Her teaching at the University of Vienna had been initiated by student representatives who had come across her name in search of a feminist psychologist in the women's counseling center. After a longer research stay in Bali, where she studied the local culture of sacrificial offerings, she resumed her teaching at the University of Vienna on request by students, again with courses on "Differential Psychology: Gender Differences" from 1989-2002 and "Differential Psychology: Gender Studies - Women's Research/Men's Research". Vobruba designed the teaching contents as follows:
"The course on gender differences—so, of course, I expanded the subject and included psychoanalysis, and everything, and ethnology, and ethnopsychoanalysis, and so on, but the course title was somehow very narrow and not according to my understanding of the subject, but I had no say in the title. It was simply called 'Differential Psychology: Gender Differences' (Vobruba, Interview with V. Luckgei, 2016).
Such a broad notion of psychology, enriched with and connected to aspects of related disciplines, characterizes her academic as well as her practical work. She was a co-founder and staff member of the Institute for Ethnopsychoanalysis and Cultural Exchange (IEK) and of the family counseling centre "Le Kri - Verein für Lebensplanung und Krisenbewältigung" [Cente for life planning and crisis management], where she was still active in 2020.
By Florian Knasmüller (2019)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Anna Vobruba
Vobruba, A. & Breiter, M. (2020) Freiheit, Gleichheit, Solidarität. In Frauen* beraten Frauen* (Ed.), Freiheit und Feminismen: Feministische Beratung und Psychotherapie 40 Jahre Frauen* beraten Frauen* (pp.67-82). Psychosozial Verlag.
By and About Anna Vobruba
Vobruba, A. (2016, October 18) Interview with V. Luckgei [Video Recording].
Vobruba, A. (2019, July 3) Interview with F. Knasmüller [Video Recording].
About Anna Vobruba
Luckgei, V., Ruck, N. & Slunecko, T. (2020). Feminist psychology at the University of Vienna, 1984-2000: A case study of a temporary hub in feminist psychological university teaching. in W. E. Pickren (Ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology.