Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) and German psychiatry [Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939) und die Deutsche psychiatrie]

Eugen Bleuler was born 150 years ago, and about 100 years ago he published his "Schizophrenia" for the very first time-giving rise to a retrospective view especially concerning German psychiatry. Together with Emil Kraepelin, who was more or less of the same epoch as Freud, E. Bleuler is one of the fathers of modern psychiatry. From the broad spectrum of his psychiatry with many findings, two achievements are particularly meaningful: the schizophrenia monography of 1911 and the first edition of his educational manual from 1916. Psychiatry owes two achievements to E. Bleuler: "deepened" psychopathology, which depicted schizophrenic symptoms and their relation, and the importance of psychoanalysis for psychiatry. Bleuler was not a psychoanalyst himself but rather a pluridimensional psychiatrist in the best sense of the word and at the same time sympathetic to psychoanalysis. The reception and historical effect of Bleuler's work are described. Another important subject that Bleuler himself regarded as the central field in his work is pointed out: the fight against alcoholism. © 2007 Springer Medizin Verlag.