Erwin Straus

Erwin Walter Maximilian Straus (11 November 1891, Frankfurt am Main – 20 May 1975, Lexington, Kentucky) was a German-American phenomenologist and neurologist who helped to pioneer anthropological medicine and psychiatry, a holistic approach to medicine that is critical of mechanistic and reductionistic approaches to understanding and treating human beings.

Some of his work can also be regarded as a precursor to or early version of neurophenomenology. Straus taught at Black Mountain College.

His books published in English include:

• Phenomenology: Pure and Applied (1964, Duquesne University Press)
• Phenomenological Psychology (1966, Basic Books)
• Psychiatry and Philosophy (1969, Springer)
• Phenomenology of Memory (1970, Duquesne University Press)
• Language and Language Disturbances (1974, Duquesne University Press)
• Man, Time, and World: Two Contributions to Anthropological Psychology (1982, Humanities Press)
• On Obsession: A Clinical and Methodological Study (1987, Johnson Reprint Corp)

• Zu Leben und Werk von Erwin Walter Maximilian Straus (1891-1975), by Franz Bossong (1991, Königshausen & Neumann)

• Decade of the Person: Tribute to Erwin Straus MD by Brian Koehler