Emil Kraepelin, the father of modern psychiatry

The name of Emil Kraepelin is one of the most important in the history of medicine. Practically He is considered the father of modern psychiatry. Also psychiatric genetics and psychopharmacology. Likewise, he was the main promoter of the so-called biological psychiatry, which sees mental illnesses as a basically organic issue.

Although Emil Kraepelin formulated his theories At the beginning of the 20th century, all of these postulates are still valid for a significant number of psychiatrists. nowadays. He has also been severely questioned for his excessive “scientism.” However, no one dares to ignore his contributions.

Emil Kraepelin strongly opposed the concepts of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. This current was in vogue at the same time in which he carried out his research. Still, he was also interested in typically psychoanalytic topics, such as the interpretation of dreams.

The story of Emil Kraepelin

Emil Kraepelin was born on February 15, 1856 in Germany. He pursued medical studies at various institutions, mainly in Leipzig. Since he began his training he showed great interest in the phenomena of the human mind. That led him to take a psychology course. experimental with Wilhelm Wundt, the creator of that current. Later he became a psychiatric assistant.

He graduated in 1874 with a thesis called On the influence of diseases acute in the genesis of mental illnesses. He later studied neuropathology and began researching psychopharmacology and psychophysiology. He also worked in several psychiatric asylums at the time and became a professor at the University of Dorpat (present-day Estonia) in 1886.

In 1922 he became head of the Research Institute Psychiatrists of the city of Munich. By then, his fame was already international. He had made a lot of progress in his approach, with very detailed investigations and presentations, which collected sharp observations about the so-called “mentally ill.”

Kraepelin’s work

The first major published work of Emil Kraepelin was Compendium psychiatry . In it he reviewed hundreds of clinical observations, from the countless cases he had treated in psychiatric asylums. This was a pioneering work in psychiatry. He described the symptomatologies in the greatest detail and sought to classify mental illnesses according to their observable manifestations. He was only 27 years old when he produced this work.

The second and third editions of that work stopped being called “compendium” and began to be called “treaty.” In these editions, Emil Kraepelin introduced the concept of disease evolution, an aspect that was decisive in making differential diagnoses.. He also introduced a chapter on catatonia.

Between the fourth and sixth editions the concept of degenerative psychic processes also appeared. These included catatonia, dementia praecox and paranoid dementia. Similarly, he introduced the concept of “manic-depressive disorder.” The truth is In each edition the different mental illnesses were expanded and specified. The eighth edition was more than 2,500 pages.

The legacy of Emil Kraepelin

One of the most interesting chapters in the history of mental sciences occurs when Emil Kraepelin treated a patient who became famous, although not because of him. It was Sergei Constantinovich Pankejeff, whom Kraepelin treated without success, giving him the diagnosis of “manic-depression.” The same patient was later treated by Sigmund Freud. He enshrined this in the history of psychoanalysis with the nickname “The Man of the Wolves.” and diagnosed him as “obsessive neurotic.”

The truth is that Kraepelin’s classifications are the basis of all modern psychiatry.. During his time it prevailed over all other theories and acquired enormous prestige. Emil Kraepelin wanted, at all costs, for psychiatry to acquire a more scientific and solid status. That is why all of his work is of impressive rigor.

Kraepelin was also interested in the study of mental illnesses in other cultures.. In this way he laid the foundations for what would become ethnopsychiatry and cultural psychiatry. In fact, he traveled repeatedly to Mexico, Spain, Indonesia, India and the United States to gather information. He called his research “comparative psychiatry.”

Emil Kraepelin died at the age of 70 in Munich (Germany). A good part of modern psychiatry is based on his work. Although this perspective has been questioned from various schools of thought, even today many psychiatrists jealously adhere to its postulates.

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