This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (3) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Kraam, A. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

On the Origin of the Clinical Standpoint in Psychiatry

By Dr Ewald Hecker in Görlitz

The Bethel Child and Family Centre, Mary Chapman House, Hotblack Road, Norwich NR2 4HN, UK, abdullah.kraam{at}norfmhctr.anglox.nhs.uk

Ewald Hecker (1843-1909), a friend and disciple of Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum (1828-1899), was a relentless advocate of his teacher’s psychiatric nosology. This paper is an early manifesto of their ideas and sets the context for the following publications, namely Hecker’s seminal paper on hebephrenia to be published in the same journal and in the same year (1871) and Kahlbaum’s catatonia published in 1874. Their idea that age of onset and time course of an illness, together with close clinical observation, helps to delineate disease forms out of the mass of confusing psychiatric symptoms proved to be one of the most important paradigm shifts in middle to late nineteenth-century psychiatry. This had a strong influence on Kraepelin’s dichotomy between dementia praecox and manic depressive insanity, and thus on our modern notions of schizophrenia and bipolar illness.

Key Words: Hecker • Kahlbaum • nosology • paradigm shift

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 15, No. 3, 345-360 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X04044598


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?