Profile
Ruth Kronsteiner
Birth:
1959
Training Location(s):
Dr., University of Vienna (2001)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Learning Together - Birlikte Öğrenelim
Hemayat - Care Center for Torture and War Survivors
Career Focus:
Intercultural psychotherapy; migration; trauma; ethnopsychoanalysis.
Biography
Ruth Kronsteiner is a cultural and social anthropologist, systemic family therapist and psychoanalyst, supervisor, and university lecturer with a focus on migration, flight, trauma, intercultural psychotherapy, and ethnopsychoanalysis. She has been working at the Viennese migrant counseling center "Miteinander Lernen - Birlikte Öğrenelim" [“Learning Together”] for 17 years. Since 2002, she has been working for the counseling center for survivors of torture and war "Hemayat" in Vienna, Austria.
Ruth Kronsteiner was born on February 17, 1959 in Vienna, Austria. She began her studies of cultural and social anthropology and "oriental" studies in 1978. In 1985, a friend asked her to teach a German course for Arabic-speaking women for a project of the feminist group „Frauensolidarität“ [Women's Solidarity] in adult education centers. Speaking Turkish and Arabic as a result of her studies, Kronsteiner recalls her surprise when she discovered at the beginning of the course that the women spoke Aramaic (not Arabic!). In the following years, she intensified educational support for immigrant children in pre-school and elementary school. Eventually, the organization of the women's project became more professional and transformed into the association "Miteinander Lernen - Birlikte Öğrenelim", a support group targeting Turkish-speaking women and children in Austria. Their course offerings consisted of alphabetization courses, German courses, basic social counseling, and tutoring. Ruth Kronsteiner soon became responsible for the organization and financing of the project. With the subsidies she received, full-time jobs could be created and the offerings expanded. From then on, she became involved in pediatric therapy, educational counseling, and migration-specific consciousness raising groups for women.
The work in the counseling center sensitized her to the psychological effects of migration experiences. Developing a strong interest in psychological topics, Kronsteiner began systemic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Her aim was to create a Turkish language offering for psychosocial counseling and psychotherapy. Also in her studies, Kronsteiner turned more towards the psychological and gender-specific problems of migrant women. In 1988, she went on an eight-month research trip to Turkey with her colleague Sabine Strasser, with whom she published the book "Ethnology in Psychotherapy". During their research stay, they observed the phenomenon of fainting attacks that occurred frequently among women. They interpreted these as a reaction to the transgression of internalized social boundaries. In 1993, Kronsteiner started teaching a course on "Psychosocial Care for Migrants“ at the University of Innsbruck, and many more would follow. Teaching at universities and colleges quickly developed into an important part of Ruth Kronsteiner's work.
In the following years, Kronsteiner also participated in the annual Women's Therapy Congresses in Germany, where, among others, the German psychologist and psychotherapist Michaela Huber presented her work with severely traumatized women who were suffering from "multiple personality disorder" (today called dissociative identity disorder). Women-specific psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and trauma research offered an important source of knowledge and working methods that shaped Kronsteiner’s understanding of psychotherapy: "For me, psychotherapy is not something cognitive, it is something very affective, that is ... the feelings, the access to feelings, are at the center of psychotherapy. In my view, the transference and counter-transference and possibilities of understanding the affective life, the inner life, are at the core. And the openness towards culture-specific understanding of the origins of illness, its course, and treatment and health: Illness is not illness everywhere" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
Such an understanding also includes the recognition that Western psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry and medicine are strongly culture-bound and require a belief in the effectiveness of psychotherapy. For Ruth Kronsteiner, self-reflection about her own culture-bound beliefs is important: "I believe in psychotherapy, I believe in the unconscious, I am culture-bound but I am aware of it, so that is also very important" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
Kronsteiner believes that women's project workers have to reflect on their own privileges. The feminist understanding of the feminist association „Miteinander Lernen“ was shaped primarily by the concept of "sisterhood" at the beginning of the 1970s, voiced by white feminists. In the late 1980s, feminist criticism of this approach led to an understanding of intersectionality in their work. In association with women of different first languages, it was necessary to reflect on hierarchies and privileges. In order to reduce hierarchies, it was important to provide educational opportunities and adequate pay for all staff members equally. "This was the concept of Miteinander Lernen ... doing things together, imparting knowledge together, for example, and also pointing out the differences: We are not equal, we aren’t" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
In 2002, Ruth Kronsteiner left „Miteinander Lernen“ to work as an independent scholar and psychotherapist. In 2003, her dissertation "Culture and Migration in Psychotherapy“ was published, in which she combines the theory and practice of her work. In her daily psychotherapeutic practice, Kronsteiner observes the effects of the three categories of racism, classism, and heterosexism as central power relations in the life realities of her patients. At the same time, right-wing politicians often use gender relations to claim cultural incompatibility. Confronting these contradictions, she has developed a feminist understanding that she regards as political and of high relevance to teaching: "Teaching is a very important field for me, in order to bring in a different perspective, that very often it is not about culture, but about poverty, about exploitation, about power and domination in relationships ... how they inscribe themselves in the psyche, and how they are reproduced by the individual. And how it is possible for nationalism to arise" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
She continues her teaching activities in psychotherapy science at the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna. As a trainer and supervisor, Kronsteiner has held seminars for Austrian women's institutions, for example on psychosocial care in an intercultural context. In addition, she offers supervision for individuals and teams. At "Hemayat - Center for Psychotherapy, Psychological Consulting and Medical Support for Survivors of War and Torture“, she works as a psychotherapist and serves on the advisory board. She is also co-author of the study "War and Torture in Asylum Procedures" in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights, which was published as a book in 2013.
By Nina Franke & Barbara Rothmüller (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Ruth Kronsteiner
Kronsteiner, R. (2003). Kultur und Migration in der Psychotherapie. Ethnologische Aspekte in psychoanalytischer und systemischer Therapie (Schriften zur Ethnopsychoanalyse 5). Brandes & Apsel Verlag.
Ammer, M., Kronsteiner, R., Schaffler, Y., Kurz, B., & Kremla, M. (2013). Krieg und Folter im Asylverfahren: Eine psychotherapeutische und juristische Studie (Studienreihe des Ludwig Boltzmann Instituts für Menschenrechte Band 28). NWV Verlag.
By and about Ruth Kronsteiner
Kronsteiner, R. (2020, February 2) Interviewed by B. Rothmüller [Audio Recording].
Ruth Kronsteiner
Birth:
1959
Training Location(s):
Dr., University of Vienna (2001)
Primary Affiliation(s):
Learning Together - Birlikte Öğrenelim
Hemayat - Care Center for Torture and War Survivors
Career Focus:
Intercultural psychotherapy; migration; trauma; ethnopsychoanalysis.
Biography
Ruth Kronsteiner is a cultural and social anthropologist, systemic family therapist and psychoanalyst, supervisor, and university lecturer with a focus on migration, flight, trauma, intercultural psychotherapy, and ethnopsychoanalysis. She has been working at the Viennese migrant counseling center "Miteinander Lernen - Birlikte Öğrenelim" [“Learning Together”] for 17 years. Since 2002, she has been working for the counseling center for survivors of torture and war "Hemayat" in Vienna, Austria.
Ruth Kronsteiner was born on February 17, 1959 in Vienna, Austria. She began her studies of cultural and social anthropology and "oriental" studies in 1978. In 1985, a friend asked her to teach a German course for Arabic-speaking women for a project of the feminist group „Frauensolidarität“ [Women's Solidarity] in adult education centers. Speaking Turkish and Arabic as a result of her studies, Kronsteiner recalls her surprise when she discovered at the beginning of the course that the women spoke Aramaic (not Arabic!). In the following years, she intensified educational support for immigrant children in pre-school and elementary school. Eventually, the organization of the women's project became more professional and transformed into the association "Miteinander Lernen - Birlikte Öğrenelim", a support group targeting Turkish-speaking women and children in Austria. Their course offerings consisted of alphabetization courses, German courses, basic social counseling, and tutoring. Ruth Kronsteiner soon became responsible for the organization and financing of the project. With the subsidies she received, full-time jobs could be created and the offerings expanded. From then on, she became involved in pediatric therapy, educational counseling, and migration-specific consciousness raising groups for women.
The work in the counseling center sensitized her to the psychological effects of migration experiences. Developing a strong interest in psychological topics, Kronsteiner began systemic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy training. Her aim was to create a Turkish language offering for psychosocial counseling and psychotherapy. Also in her studies, Kronsteiner turned more towards the psychological and gender-specific problems of migrant women. In 1988, she went on an eight-month research trip to Turkey with her colleague Sabine Strasser, with whom she published the book "Ethnology in Psychotherapy". During their research stay, they observed the phenomenon of fainting attacks that occurred frequently among women. They interpreted these as a reaction to the transgression of internalized social boundaries. In 1993, Kronsteiner started teaching a course on "Psychosocial Care for Migrants“ at the University of Innsbruck, and many more would follow. Teaching at universities and colleges quickly developed into an important part of Ruth Kronsteiner's work.
In the following years, Kronsteiner also participated in the annual Women's Therapy Congresses in Germany, where, among others, the German psychologist and psychotherapist Michaela Huber presented her work with severely traumatized women who were suffering from "multiple personality disorder" (today called dissociative identity disorder). Women-specific psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and trauma research offered an important source of knowledge and working methods that shaped Kronsteiner’s understanding of psychotherapy: "For me, psychotherapy is not something cognitive, it is something very affective, that is ... the feelings, the access to feelings, are at the center of psychotherapy. In my view, the transference and counter-transference and possibilities of understanding the affective life, the inner life, are at the core. And the openness towards culture-specific understanding of the origins of illness, its course, and treatment and health: Illness is not illness everywhere" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
Such an understanding also includes the recognition that Western psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry and medicine are strongly culture-bound and require a belief in the effectiveness of psychotherapy. For Ruth Kronsteiner, self-reflection about her own culture-bound beliefs is important: "I believe in psychotherapy, I believe in the unconscious, I am culture-bound but I am aware of it, so that is also very important" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
Kronsteiner believes that women's project workers have to reflect on their own privileges. The feminist understanding of the feminist association „Miteinander Lernen“ was shaped primarily by the concept of "sisterhood" at the beginning of the 1970s, voiced by white feminists. In the late 1980s, feminist criticism of this approach led to an understanding of intersectionality in their work. In association with women of different first languages, it was necessary to reflect on hierarchies and privileges. In order to reduce hierarchies, it was important to provide educational opportunities and adequate pay for all staff members equally. "This was the concept of Miteinander Lernen ... doing things together, imparting knowledge together, for example, and also pointing out the differences: We are not equal, we aren’t" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
In 2002, Ruth Kronsteiner left „Miteinander Lernen“ to work as an independent scholar and psychotherapist. In 2003, her dissertation "Culture and Migration in Psychotherapy“ was published, in which she combines the theory and practice of her work. In her daily psychotherapeutic practice, Kronsteiner observes the effects of the three categories of racism, classism, and heterosexism as central power relations in the life realities of her patients. At the same time, right-wing politicians often use gender relations to claim cultural incompatibility. Confronting these contradictions, she has developed a feminist understanding that she regards as political and of high relevance to teaching: "Teaching is a very important field for me, in order to bring in a different perspective, that very often it is not about culture, but about poverty, about exploitation, about power and domination in relationships ... how they inscribe themselves in the psyche, and how they are reproduced by the individual. And how it is possible for nationalism to arise" (Kronsteiner, interview with B. Rothmüller, 2020).
She continues her teaching activities in psychotherapy science at the Sigmund Freud Private University in Vienna. As a trainer and supervisor, Kronsteiner has held seminars for Austrian women's institutions, for example on psychosocial care in an intercultural context. In addition, she offers supervision for individuals and teams. At "Hemayat - Center for Psychotherapy, Psychological Consulting and Medical Support for Survivors of War and Torture“, she works as a psychotherapist and serves on the advisory board. She is also co-author of the study "War and Torture in Asylum Procedures" in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights, which was published as a book in 2013.
By Nina Franke & Barbara Rothmüller (2020)
To cite this article, see Credits
Selected Works
By Ruth Kronsteiner
Kronsteiner, R. (2003). Kultur und Migration in der Psychotherapie. Ethnologische Aspekte in psychoanalytischer und systemischer Therapie (Schriften zur Ethnopsychoanalyse 5). Brandes & Apsel Verlag.
Ammer, M., Kronsteiner, R., Schaffler, Y., Kurz, B., & Kremla, M. (2013). Krieg und Folter im Asylverfahren: Eine psychotherapeutische und juristische Studie (Studienreihe des Ludwig Boltzmann Instituts für Menschenrechte Band 28). NWV Verlag.
By and about Ruth Kronsteiner
Kronsteiner, R. (2020, February 2) Interviewed by B. Rothmüller [Audio Recording].