She wrote about something Germans wanted to forget: World War II and its (psychological) consequences. With her husband Alexander, Margarete Mitscherlich penned "The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior."

First published in 1967, it initially sold over 100,000 copies in the hardback edition, and passages of the book eventually found their way into school textbooks in Germany.

The book was also translated into English during the 1970s.

Now, Mitscherlich looks back at the 90 years of her life and says she is "quite content." Even if she cannot move around the way she used to, her mind is still very agile, she said.

It has to be to keep up with her busy schedule. Her typical day: "I read a lot, think a lot, write a lot and work a lot," she said.

She also continues to see patients and advises up-and-coming psychoanalysts. At the end of July, she will attend an international psychoanalysis congress in Berlin.

Long, full life

Mitscherlich's mother was a German teacher and her father a Danish doctor. During the Nazi dictatorship, the young Mitscherlich, née Nielsen, grew up in Germany and Denmark.

She studied medicine and then primarily worked in Switzerland, where she met Alexander Mitscherlich. Together, they had a son and later married.

They also collaborated together, and jointly worked at the Psychosomatic Clinic in Heidelberg and then later at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt.

There, Margarete Mitscherlich was also head of psychoanalytic training.

Following the publication of "The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behavior," Mitscherlich's most important book "The Peaceable Sex: On Aggression in Women and Men," appeared in 1985.

Though Mitscherlich increasingly focused on women's rights in her work, "Peaceable Sex" maintained that women are not by nature less aggressive than men; they have simply been taught to be (supposedly) more agreeable.

"I have always said that women not only must assert themselves against men, but against their own selves as well," she once said in an interview published in the book "The Steely Woman."

But she was never a feminist hardliner who rejected all things feminine. She freely admits to having a penchant for expensive cosmetics.

"Freeing oneself of pre-conceived notions"

"An emancipated woman is able to distance herself from pre-conceived notions of what her role should be," she said.

Psychoanalysis and feminism have a lot in common, Mitscherlich said.

"Freud was the first to recognize that women are sexual beings," she noted.

Mitscherlich continues to track developments in society with her psychoanalytic mind.

She said that after growing up in an era marked by fascism, she sees Germany as a stable democracy, one that was once dominated by men and can now boast a woman as its leader.

It's also a culture in which every taxi driver is familiar with the fundamental terms of psychoanalysis, she remarked.

In an interview with the German press agency DPA, however, she said she did have a little piece of advice for succeeding generations: to remember that "one does not necessarily become wiser with age."