Lola Hoffmann
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Lola Hoffmann (also known as Helena Jacoby) (March 19, 1904 – April 30, 1988) was a German Jewish and Chilean physiologist and psychiatrist.[1][2]
Lola Hoffman was born Helena Jacoby in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, to a well-off German-speaking Lutheran family of Jewish origin. Her father participated in the movement led by Alexander Kerenski. He was persecuted by the Bolsheviks, who occupied Latvia following the First World War. When Hoffmann was 15, her family moved to Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany. Hoffmann enrolled in the School of Medicine of Freiburg and stayed when her family decided to return to Riga.
Career
Physiology
After finishing her thesis on the suprarenal glands of rats, Hoffmann left Freiburg and moved to Berlin, where she became an assistant of Paul Trendelenburg, who specialised in hormones. In 1931, she moved to Chile with her lover Franz Hoffman.
During her first year in Chile, she dedicated herself to learning Spanish and to immersing herself in Chilean culture. Hoffmann then worked at the Bacteriological Institute as her husband's assistant at the newly founded Institute of Physiology of the University of Chile. The couple researched, published papers, and travelled together. She would work at the Institute of Physiology from 1938 until her departure in 1951.
Psychiatry
After more than 20 years of experimental physiology study, Hoffmann began to lose interest in her profession and eventually developed depression. While traveling to Europe with her husband, she read the book The Psychology of C. G. Jung by Jolande Jacobi. After arriving in Zürich, she contacted Jacobi. Their talks, along with other experiences, led her to make the decision to abandon physiology and become a psychiatrist.
When Hoffmann returned to Chile, she began practicing psychoanalytic dream interpretation using her own dreams. Following this, she would go on to work at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Chile. In her explorative studies, she started practicing autogenic training, a method of self-hypnosis developed by the German neurologist, Johannes Heinrich Schultz. She also drew inspiration from the works of German psychiatrist, Ernst Kretschmer.
After 5 years working in the Psychiatric Clinic, Hoffman felt the need for more in-depth study. She applied for a fellowship in the Psychiatric Clinic of Tübingen, Germany. She remained in Tübingen for one year and then moved to Zurich for another year, where she attended the last conferences given by Jung. The ideas she picked up during these conferences would be key to her later work as a psychotherapist.
After returning to Chile in 1959, she rejoined the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Chile, where she participated one of the first trials of group therapy and a controlled group experimentation with LSD and marijuana.
