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The syndrome of accident proneness (Unfallneigung): why psychiatrists did not adopt and medicalize it

Ohio State University, Burnham.2{at}osu.edu

In the World War I period, psychologists in Britain and Germany independently and simultaneously originated the idea of accident proneness (Unfallneigung). This distinctive syndrome of suffering a series of accidents was logically attractive for psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, especially as a pattern of unconsciously motivated deviant and self-destructive behaviour. Yet except for some mid-twentieth-century interest by psychosomatics specialists, psychiatrists did not systematically embrace the syndrome except occasionally as a symptom of other psychiatric conditions, thus showing that there were limits to the extent to which twentieth-century psychiatrists would medicalize patterns of behaviour.

Key Words: accident proneness • accidents • medicalization • psychiatry • psychology • safety movement

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 3, 251-274 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X07077594


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