Axel Hoffer, M.D.: Psychiatrist, Corresponding Member of the Faculty of Psychiatry, Author

Dr. Axel Hoffer is a psychiatrist in Brookline, Massachusetts and is affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst in Boston and Associate Professor of Psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hoffer was also associated with the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East as a training and supervising analyst. Dr. Hoffer holds a certification in adult psychoanalysis and is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has lectured and supervised in the United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia and Israel.

Born in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, Dr. Hoffer spent his junior year at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany between 1955 and 1956. He graduated from Harvard College and earned a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in 1957 and received a Doctor of Medicine, cum laude, from Harvard University in 1961.

Dr. Hoffer began his career as a medical intern for the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston between 1961 and 1962. He began his residency in psychiatry with the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, where he also held the posts of fellow in child psychiatry, clinical associate, assistant clinical director and associate director from 1962 to 1976. He then worked as an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School between 1975 and 1996. At this time, Dr. Hoffer started his own private psychoanalysis and psychotherapy practice in Boston during 1975, which he continues to operate. He became the director of in-patient services at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in 1976. He also contributed as an associate clinical professor at Harvard Medical School from 1996 until 2018.

Dr. Hoffer served in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps between 1966 and 1968, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Commander at NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health). He sat on the editorial board for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and has acted as an editor for the publications "Freud and The Buddha, The Couch and The Cushion," and wrote the introduction to "The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 2: 1914-1919." He and his brother, Peter, translated Freud's "Phylogenetic Fantasy." He has also written the Foreword to the latter, and the Introduction to the second volume of the Freud-Ferenczi Correspondence.

Available on Amazon, "Freud and the Buddha" explores what psychoanalysis and Buddhism can learn from each other, and offers chapters by a Buddhist scholar, a psychiatrist-author, and a number of top psychoanalysts.

Dr. Hoffer was awarded the Journal Prize from the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1984. He won the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association prize for his paper "Toward a definition of psychoanalytic neutrality." He was included in the first edition of Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare and the 23rd edition of Who's Who in the East. He maintains a professional relationship with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.