Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie

by Eugen Bleuler

Auszug:

Das Buch soll das dem Mediziner für die Praxis notwendige Wissen vermitteln helfen. Es setzt aber zu einem vollen Verständnis den Besuch der psychiatrischen Klinik voraus, die die Darstellung illustriert und vor allem zeigt, was die psychiatrischen Benennungen wirklich meinen. Leider bedeuten diese von Lehrer zu Lehrer nicht das Gleiche, und noch schlimmer ist, daß die dahinter steckenden Begriffe zu einem nicht kleinen Teil auch nicht einheitlich sind und sogar oft der nötigen Klarheit entbehren. Ich habe mich bemüht, mit scharfen Begriffen zu arbeiten, und, wo das noch nicht möglich ist, den Mangel ins Licht zu setzen; unscharfe Begriffe, die für klare gehalten werden, schaden einem wirklichen Verständnis viel mehr als Nichtwissen. Die Rücksicht auf den Umfang des Buches machte es unvermeidlich, die psychologischen Darstellungen gegenüber der unendlichen Mannigfaltigkeit des Gegenstandes etwas zu systematisieren.

Genres: Psychology

744 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Paul Eugen Bleuler (April 30, 1857 – July 15, 1939) was a Swiss psychiatrist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and for coining the terms "schizophrenia", "schizoid", "autism", and what Sigmund Freud called "Bleuler's happily chosen term ambivalence".

Bleuler was born in Zollikon, a big town near Zürich in Switzerland, to Johann Rudolf Bleuler, a wealthy farmer, and Pauline Bleuler-Bleuler. He studied medicine in Zürich and following his graduation in 1881 he worked as a medical assistant to Gottlieb Burckhardt at the Waldau Psychiatric Clinic in Bern. Leaving this post in 1884 he spent one year on medical study trips to Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris, to Bernhard von Gudden in Munich and to London. Thereafter he returned to Zürich to take a post as an intern at the Burghölzli, a university hospital.

In 1886 Bleuler became the director of a psychiatric clinic at Rheinau, a hospital located in an old monastery on an island in the Rhine. It was noted at the time for being backward, and Bleuler set about improving conditions for the patients resident there.

Bleuler returned to the Burghölzli in 1898 where he was appointed director.

Following his interest in hypnotism, especially in its "introspective" variant, Bleuler became interested in Sigmund Freud's work, favorably reviewing Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud's Studies on Hysteria. Like Freud, Bleuler believed that complex mental processes could be unconscious. He encouraged his staff at the Burghölzli to study unconscious and psychotic mental phenomena. Influenced by Bleuler, Carl Jung and Franz Riklin used word association tests to integrate Freud's theory of repression with empirical psychological findings. As a series of letters demonstrates (published in English in 2003), Bleuler performed from 1905 a self-analysis with Freud.

He found Freud's movement to be over-dogmatic and resigned from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1911, writing to Freud that "this 'all or nothing' is in my opinion necessary for religious communities and useful for political parties...but for science I consider it harmful". Bleuler remained interested in Freud's work, citing him favourably, for example, in his often reprinted Textbook of Psychiatry (1916).

Bleuler also explored the concept of moral idiocy, and the relationship between neurosis and alcoholism. He followed Freud in seeing sexuality as a potent influence upon anxiety, pondered on the origins of the sense of guilt, and studied the process of what he termed switching (the affective shift from love to hate, for example).

Bleuler was known for his clinical observation and willingness to let symptoms speak for themselves, as well as for his skilful expository writings.