Leopold Alexander longed to be a doctor, like his father, Gustav. “One of the strongest unconscious motives for becoming a physician was the strong bond of identification with my father,” he once said, explaining the pull toward medicine. Gustav Alexander was an ear, nose, and throat doctor in turn-of-the-century Vienna, a distinguished scholar who published more than eighty scientific papers before Leopold was born. His mother, Gisela, was the first woman awarded a PhD in philosophy from the University of Vienna, the oldest university in the German-speaking world. From a young age Leopold led
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