Hannah S. Decker
Professor (Europe, Germany)
534 Agnes Arnold Hall
(713) 743-3095
hsdecker@uh.edu

Dr. Decker is a scholar of German history. For more than thirty years she has specialized in cultural history with research specialties in the histories of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Decker received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and had a fellowship in the history of psychiatry at the Cornell Medical School. She has taught at the University of Houston since 1974. She is also the multiple recipient of the University of Houston Research Excellence Award, the University Of Houston Teaching Excellence Award, and the 2005 Teaching Excellence Award in Humanities given by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

Dr. Decker has presented papers and commentaries at national conferences such as the American Historical Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association and the Southern Historical Association. Decker served as a consultant to the Library of Congress regarding an exhibit on Sigmund Freud and to PBS on a TV series on the thought of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. Decker has been the director and chair of the graduate and undergraduate committees. She was also Associate Dean in the College of Humanities, Fine Arts, and Communications for several years.

Teaching:
Dr. Decker teaches a variety of undergraduate courses that covers German History from 1815 to 1970. Professor Decker teaches graduate seminars on Nazi Germany and nineteenth century European politics, society, and culture and undergraduate classes on nineteenth and twentieth century German history, the life and times of Sigmund Freud and the history of psychoanalysis, and Western Civilization from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. She also conducts one-on-one special problems courses in a wide variety of European history topics. She has a particular interest in teaching the history of ideas and the relationship between science and culture.

Professor Decker uses a variety of teaching techniques so that she can impart to her students an understanding of the complexities and multicausalities that underlie all historical events as well as the lives of historical figures. This is knowledge that all students—majors in history or not—can take away with them to better understand the social and political events that will unfold during their lives. For history majors and graduate students, she has the additional goals of students’ acquisition of knowledge and their learning to approach all information analytically and critically. Decker likes to teach seminars and small lecture classes best because they facilitate discussion and students’ involvement. She has directed and served on many dissertation and thesis committees.

Research:
Decker is the author of two books and more than eighteen scholarly articles. She has done scholarly reviews for journals such as the Journal of Social History, The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association), ISIS (Journal of the History of Science Society), and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. She is currently doing research on the history of involutional melancholia and a history of self-mutilation.

Selected Publications:
Freud in Germany: Revolution and Reaction in Science, 1893-1907. (International universities press, 1977).

Freud, Dora, and Vienna 1900. (The Free Press, 1991) Paperback Edition, 1992.

Spanish Edition Freud, Dora y la Viena 1900. (Biblioteca Neuva, 1999).
"The Interpretation of Dreams: Early Reception by the Educated German Public," Journal of History of Behavioral Sciences, April, 1975, Vol. 11 (2), pp. 129-141.

"The Historical Evolution of Dementia Praecox." In Phenomenology and Treatment of Schizophrenia. New York: Spectrum Publications, 1978, pp. 301-309.

“A Tangled Skein: The Freud-Jung Relationship,” Essays in the History of Psychiatry. Columbia, SC: Wm. S. Hall Psychiatric Institute, 1980, pp. 103-117.

“The Lure of Non-Materialism in Materialist Europe: Investigations of Dissociative Phenomena, 1880-1915,” Split Minds/Split Brains: Historical and Current Perspectives. J.M. Quen, ed) New York University press, 1986, pp. 31-62.

“What Will Happen If My Zurichers Desert Me?”: The Favorable Reception of Psychoanalysis in Switzerland.” The Psychiatric Clinics of North America. September 1994, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 637-648.

“”Freud’s ‘Dora’ Case: The Crucible of the Psychoanalytic Concept of Transference,” in Michael Roth (ed.), Freud: Culture and Conflict. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998 pp. 105-114, 243-244.

"The Psychiatric Works of Emil Kraepelin: A Many-Faceted Story of Modern Medicine, Journal of the History of Neurosciences. Vol. 13, No. 3, September 2004, pp. 248-276.

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