Dr Otto Gross (1877 - 1920) A maverick early disciple of Freud who rebelled against his teacher, became an anarchist and joined the utopian Ascona community. A champion of an early form of anti-psychiatry and sexual liberation, he also developed an anarchist form of depth psychology (rejecting the civilising necessity of psychological repression proposed by Freud) and adopted a similarly modified form of the proto feminist neo-pagan theories of Johann Jakob Bachofen with which he attempted to reverse history back to a 'golden age'. He was subsequently ostracized and his history erased by the psychoanalytic and psychiatric establisments. He died in poverty in 1920.

Greatly influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche and the political theories of Kropotkin, he in turn influenced the likes of D H Lawrence (through his affair with Frieda Weekley), Franz Kafka and many other artists, including the founders of Berlin Dada. His influence on psychology was limited by his deletion from its history, however Carl Jung claimed his entire worldview changed when he attempted to analyse Gross, and partially had the tables turned on him. And it is likely that maverick psychologists such as Wilhelm Reich and Erich Fromm many of whose ideas mirror those Gross owe some hidden debt to him.

More speculatively as a Bohemian drug user, from early youth, who joined a Volkish community, he is sometimes credited a founding grandfather of Counterculture.

The Otto Gross Society is dedicated to preserving his work. http://www.ottogross.org