Eugen bleuler biography of nancy
Dr. Bleuler
To the Editors:
The book review of Elizabeth Hardwick of Zelda Fitzgerald [NYR, Sept. 24] is very beautifully written and seems to me extremely pertinent. However, one sentence shocked me slightly, and I think it needs some additional comments. Elizabeth Hardwick writes, “Zelda was diagnosed abroad by a Dr. Bleuler as a schizophrenic. She herself thought Dr. Bleuler ‘a great imbecile’….”
I was prepared to come across in the next sentence, “…A Dr. Freud however thought something different….”
Nancy Milford does not seem to realize that Eugene Bleuler was the most famous psychiatrist probably in the history of psychiatry and his importance for the understanding of mental illness equals Freud’s. He is, therefore, as well-known all over the educated world. It was Bleuler who coined the term Schizophrenic in one of the most famous publications in psychiatric literature: Die Schizophrenien, which appeared around 1911. If he, therefore, diagnosed Zelda as schizophrenic, the diagnosis has to be accepted as the most authoritative diagnosis if there has ever been any. Bleuler was at the time of consultation on the peak of his fame and world-wide reputation, but anyone who had the privilege of knowing him would agree that he was the kindest, most modest physician who could be imagined. His beautiful head, which was cast from the Swiss mountains, coming from old peasant stock, was the incorporation of intelligence, kindness, and vision. Nobody could resist his impressive face and his ways in which he handled patients, and it is quite surprising that a person like Zelda should not have responded to his irresistible magnetism. The reviewer and the author are also mistaken that the diagnosis of schizophrenia meant hopeless mental disaster. It was Bleuler who established that there are many forms of schizophrenia, and that many of them have a good prognosis and respond to treatment.
As to the book itself, it is sa
by Federico Soldani – 29th Dec 2021
“I didn’t know my grandfather, [Paul]Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939), personally. He died a number of years before I was born. Everything I know about him was told to me by my father, Manfred Bleuler, Eugen’s eldest son” [a psychiatrist himself, ed.] (emphasis and links added in subsequent quotes as well).
In an article entitled ‘Being a Member of the Bleuler Family’ (full text available on PubMed of the U.S. National Library of Medicine) published in the journals History of Psychiatry and Schizophrenia Bulletin in 2011, a granddaughter of Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler briefly reconstructed what she knew about her grandfather and his family and professional environment.
A similar article aboutCarl Gustav Jung by a grandson was previously discussed in PsyPolitics.
According to Wikipedia, accessed 29th December 2021, the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler studied medicine in Zürich. He trained for his psychiatric residency at Waldau Hospital under Gottileb Burckhardt, a Swiss psychiatrist, from 1881-1884. He left his job in 1884 and spent one year on medical study trips with Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist in Paris, Bernhard von Gudden, a German psychiatrist in Munich, and to London. After these trips, he returned to Zürich to briefly work as assistant to Auguste Forel while completing his psychiatric residency at the Burghölzli, a university hospital” where he later became professor of psychiatry and director.
During his career “Bleuler coined several terms such as ‘schizophrenia‘, ‘schizoid‘, ‘autism‘, depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called “Bleuler’s happily chosen term ‘ambivalence‘”.
Some of Eugen Bleuler’s students included psychiatrists such as “Abraham, Binswanger, Jung, Brill, Mi VOL 14, NO. 3,1988 Clinical Phenomenology CHAIRPERSON Nancy C. Andreasen The ability to advance our knowledge about schizophrenia has been partially handicapped by our inability to define it precisely and consistently. There is no question that schizophrenia is a "real disorder" that produces severe and often persistent disabilities. For a variety of historical and conceptual reasons, however, there has been disagreement among clinicians and investigators as to the best ways to define this disorder. The principal and absolutely fundamental contribution that phenomenology and nosology can make is to identify some of the controversial issues so that their effect on research is recognized and to make a useful group of suggestions concerning these definitional issues. If we are to make any substantial progress in understanding the pathophysiology and etiology of schizophrenia or in developing improved treatments for it, knowing how to describe, define, and recognize it is a necessity. One major controversy concerns the boundaries of the concept of schizophrenia. Should it be defined narrowly or broadly? In the late 1800's, Kraepelin chose a narrow definition, describing this illness as one with early onset and with progressive deterioration and cognitive impairment ("dementia praecox"). In 1911, Bleuler introduced the term "schizophrenia." He believed that the characteristic feature of schizophrenia was "splitting" or fragmenting of thinking processes in schizophrenia, a symptom that he referred to as "associative loosening." He believed that this abnormality was the distinguishing characteristic of schizophrenia and that certain other features such as affective blunting, ambivalence, and disordered attention were also of CO-CHAIR David Shore MEMBERS Jack D. Burke, Jr. William M. Grove Jeffrey A. Lieberman Thomas F. Oltmanns Jay W. Pettegrew Ann E. Pulver Larry J. Siever Ming T. Tsuang Rich Eighty years ago, schizophrenia was the first indication for electroconulsive therapy (ECT), and likewise ECT was one of the first treatments used for schizophrenia. This paper presents the history of ECT in the treatment of schizophrenia and its evolution, from it’s discovery in the 20th century, which is an example of empiricism with a sequence of “shock” therapies. Following this discovery, the use ECT in schizophrenia has been in expansion during several decades, in a context of lack of efficacy of the treatment in schizophrenia. Then, after World War II and the derivative use of ECT in Germany, the use of ECT has decline during several decades. However, in the last decades, the use of ECT in schizophrenia has reemerged. Indeed, among patients in schizophrenia, rates of resistance to treatment have always been and still are high. In 2017, the concept of “ultra-treatment resistant schizophrenia” was defined when clozapine was tried and failed; and ECT, that had been long since abandoned in the treatment of schizophrenia until recent renewed interest, has emerged especially concerning the add-on of ECT to clozapine. However, ECT remains highly stigmatized and underutilized. This article looks at the history of the practice of ECT in schizophrenia with a historical and clinical approach and makes connections between the history of the treatment and its influence on its current recommendation and practice. Keywords: electroconvulsive therapy, electroshock, schizophrenia, resistant/schizophrenia Eugen Bleuler’s conception of schizophrenia finds its origins in Emil Kraeplin’s conception of “dementia praecox”. At the congress of the German Association of Psychiatrists in 1908, Eugen Bleuler pronounced for the first time the word “schizophrenia”. Shortly thereafter, in 1936, electric shocks became one of the most widespread treatments for schizophrenia. Antipsychotics, discovered first in 1952, were seen as a significant improve
Clinical Phenomenology
Abstract
Introduction