Bohuslav Brouk (19. 11. 1912 ─ 20. 01. 1978) was a well-known intellectual bohemian, the enfant terrible of the interwar Czechoslovak cultural scene, and sometimes called the “apostle of sexual exuberance “. His work reflects his knowledge of biology, aesthetics, philosophy and psychoanalysis, and within the Faculty of Science of Charles University he can be considered a forerunner of the philosophical school of Zdeněk Neubauer and his students.

Bohuslav Brouk was the son of the merchant Jaroslav Brouk (from the Brouk and Babka and the Bílá labut department stores). He went to business academy in Prague`s Karlín and to grammar school in Klatovy. His interest in psychoanalysis led him to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University (from 1932), but a year later he transferred to the Faculty of Science. He was interested in anthropology, and his doctoral thesis on intelligence and genius was published as The Pathology of Life Fitness. From 1937 he studied aesthetics at the Faculty of Philosophy of Charles University and he defended a second doctoral thesis there (Linguistic Comedy, 1946). He was one of the founders of the Czech surrealist movement. From the 1930s onwards, he criticised communist ideology (although he was himself inspired by Marxism) and he emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1948. From 1951 to 1958 he lived in Melbourne, Australia, where he worked in a biochemical laboratory. In 1958 he moved to London, where he first taught at high school and then lectured in biology at North Western Polytechnic and Borough Polytechnic. Following his teaching activities, he published a book on useful plants, Plants consumed by man (1975).

Brouk is still known today for his studies of human behaviour from the perspective of psychoanalysis, spiced with his free-spiritedness and sense of humour. To cite some of Brouk`s theses: human sexuality cannot be restrained, proportionate infidelity strengthens the marriage bond, masturbation is a means of cultivating fantasy, madness goes hand in hand with talent. He was also critical of sport, which he saw as a means of aimlessly destroying human powers thus paralysing human sexuality and activity.

Bohuslav Brouk was one of the Czech interwar philosopher-biologists who worked at the Faculty of Science and whose chief representative at the time was Emanuel Rádl. In the 1990s, the tradition of thinking on the borderline between philosophy and biology was revived by Zdeněk Neubauer and his students, such as Stanislav Komárek, Zdeněk Kratochvíl and others.

Keywords: anthropology; biochemistry; botany; history of natural sciences; naturfilosofie [natural philosophy]; aesthetics; psychoanalysis; sexology; ethology