Dementia praecox

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Dementia praecox is an outdated collective term from German psychiatry . Today it is only used in the historical or colloquial sense and earlier referred to a group of mental illnesses ("mental illnesses") from the schizophrenic circle of forms .

history

Eugen Bleuler: Dementia praecox or group of schizophrenias (first print 1911)

The term dementia praecox (démence précoce, premature dementia ) goes back to the French psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel . In his work Traite des Maladies Mentales , published in 1860, he used it to describe the illness of a young person who - previously completely inconspicuous - increasingly withdrew and fell into a state of dementia.

Emil Kraepelin recognized certain similarities between the disorder described by Morel and the diseases hebephrenia and catatonia described by Kahlbaum and Hecker : All diseases began in adolescence or early adulthood and were accompanied by increasing psychological decline, which ended in a dementia state.

Kraepelin was convinced that the course and outcome of the illness were best suited to differentiate between various psychiatric illnesses. He therefore viewed these three disorders as different manifestations of a single disease entity , which he summarized under the term "Dementia praecox" ("premature dementia"). According to him, the common characteristic of all clinical pictures within this group was "a peculiar destruction of the inner connection of the psychic personality with predominant damage to the emotional life and the will".

He contrasted dementia praecox with manic-depressive insanity (as a precursor of bipolar affective disorder ), which was characterized by an episodic and overall more favorable course.

However, this theory could not be held and the designation was rejected as inadequate. The psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler said at the annual meeting of the German Association for Psychiatry in Berlin on April 24, 1908 that Kraepelin's "Dementia praecox" "is neither a necessary dementia nor a necessary praecocitas" and suggested the designation "schizophrenia" for it " in front. In 1911, Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia for these symptoms in his description of dementia praecox or group of schizophrenias . In doing so, he initiated a fundamental change in the understanding of this disorder.

See also

literature

  • Bénédict Augustin Morel: Traité des Maladies Mentales. 1860.
  • Eugen Bleuler: Dementia praecox or group of schizophrenias (= manual of psychiatry. Special part. 4th section, 1st half). Franz Deuticke, Leipzig / Vienna 1911 ( full text  - Internet Archive ); Reprint Psychosozialverlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89806-616-7 , reading sample (PDF).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theocharis BC Kyziridis. Notes on the History of Schizophrenia . In: German Journal of Psychiatry . tape 8 , no. 3 , 2005, p. 42–48 ( gjpsy.uni-goettingen.de [PDF; 149 kB ]).
  2. ↑ Grit Althaus u. a .: The autistic hebephrenia. Concepts and Findings . In: Advances in Neurology and Psychiatry . tape 69 , no. 10 , 2001, p. 482-487 , doi : 10.1055 / s-2001-17561 .
  3. ↑ Mario Lanczik: Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum (1828-1899) and the emergence of psychopathological and nosological research in German psychiatry . In: History of Psychiatry . tape 3 , no. 9 , 1992, pp. 53-58 , doi : 10.1177 / 0957154X9200300905 .
  4. ^ A b Emil Kraepelin: Psychiatry. A textbook for students and doctors. 8th edition. Barth, Leipzig 1913, Volume 3, Clinical Psychiatry , p. 668
  5. ↑ Rolf Baer: The psychiatric system around 1800 and their overcoming. Cologne 1983 (= The medical conversation. Volume 3), p. 45.