After his secondary school examination in 1925, he studied law in Lausanne and Paris. In 1927, he started to study psychology, philosophy, and Romance studies in Freiburg, Heidelberg, and Berlin. From 1929 on, he studied in Bonn by Professor Erich Rothacker psychology and by professor Ernst Robert Curtius Romance studies. He took the doctors degree 1933 by Rothacker with the dissertation "Psychische Automatismen". At the time he was an assistant at the Psychological Institute of the University of Bonn, he studied medicine in parallel to the controversial psychology to get a better reputation. His claim to have made his a state examination for a PhD in medicine by professor Kurt Beringer on the subject of ""Die Arbeitskurve unter Pervitin"" remained a claim, as he was not able to present the promotion certificate. To eliminate this problem, he drew up a new medical dissertation at old age.