John Carl Flugel (born John Carl Flügel; 13 June 1884 – 6 August 1955) was a British experimental psychologist and a practising psychoanalyst.

Early life Flügel was born in Liverpool on 13 June 1884, to a German father and English mother.Graham Richards, 'Flügel, John Carl (1884–1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004

Work

Flügel's book Psychoanalytic Study of the Family (1921) was acclaimed by Eric Berne for its insights into the Oedipus complex.Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (1976) p. 134 He also published Men and their Motives (1934) and The Psychology of Clothes (1930),O. L. Zangwill, 'Flugel, John Charles', in R. Gregory ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind (1987) p. 264 the latter continuing to influence thinking on the subject into the 21st century.R. Koppen, Virginia Woolf, Fashion and Literary Modernism (2009) p. 59

In Man, Morals and Society (1945), Flugel charted a movement from egocentrism to social awareness by way of what he saw as a hierarchy of expanding loyalties.J. C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society (1973) p. 242-3 and p. 317 Reaching back to his old mentor, he also highlighted “the distinction that McDougall has sometimes made between an 'ideal', which is little more than an intellectual assent to a moral proposition, and a 'sentiment', which involves a real mobilisation”.J. C. Flugel, Man, Morals and Society (1973) p. 67

He coined the phrase "Great Male Renunciation" () in 1930, referring to the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which wealthy Western men stopped using bright colors, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women's clothing. Instead, men concentrated on minute differences of cut, and the quality of the plain cloth. It is considered a major turning point in the history of clothing, in which the men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty.

Personal life In 1913 Flügel married Ingeborg Klingberg, who also became a psychoanalyst. They had one daughter. Flügel died in London in 1955.

References

Further reading

Graham Richards, Flügel, John Carl (1884–1955), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. FLUGEL, John Carl, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007, accessed 30 Jan 2012