Adolf Meyer (psychiatrist)

Adolf Meyer (1910)

Adolf Meyer (born September 13, 1866 in Niederweningen , Canton of Zurich , † March 17, 1950 in Baltimore ) was a Swiss - American psychiatrist .

Life

Meyer studied psychiatry with Auguste Forel and neuropathology with Constantin von Monakow at the University of Zurich . He received his doctorate on December 16, 1892 with the dissertation on the forebrain of some reptiles and then specialized as a neuropathologist .

Since he could not find a job at the University of Zurich, he emigrated to the USA in 1892. He first practiced neurology and taught at the University of Chicago , where he came into contact with the ideas of the Chicago functionalists. From 1893 to 1895 he was a pathologist at the new psychiatric clinic in Kankakee, Illinois . He then worked at the state clinic in Worcester , Massachusetts . He has published many articles on neurology, neuropathology, and psychiatry. In 1902 he became director of the pathological institute, "The Psychiactric Institute", of the New York State Hospital System. He had a major influence on American psychiatry by introducing Emil Kraepelin's classification system, pointing out the importance of detailed disease histories and the possibilities of psychoanalysis. Meyer adopted Freud's ideas about the importance of sexuality and the influence of early childhood on the adult personality. Meyer was Professor of Psychiatry at Cornell University from 1904 to 1909 and at Johns Hopkins University from 1910 to 1941 . The well-known analyst Else Pappenheim was one of many who was tutored by Meyer during this period. Since it was founded in 1913, he was also the rector of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic . In 1927 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

plant

Meyer did not write books. His influence on American psychiatry came through his numerous published articles and through his students at Manhattan State and especially Johns Hopkins University.

His main contribution to the development of psychiatry were his ideas on psychobiology , with which he sought an approach to the psychiatric patient that referred to relevant biological, psychological and social factors. He was of the then untimely view that all human behavior in health and illness meant an answer and an attempted solution to life's questions. In this sense, the behavior of schizophrenic patients had to make some sense, and it was much more the psychiatrist's mistake than the patient's that the two did not get along. Meyer's "dynamic concept" prompted Harry Stack Sullivan to research the actual difficult to understand goals and intentions of his patients and he found ways to cure the so-called "incurable mentally ill" purely psychotherapeutically.

He placed particular emphasis on creating detailed case histories in which the social and environmental backgrounds of the patient's upbringing were examined. He believed that nervous diseases were more the result of a personality disorder than a brain disease. His emphasis on social factors had a profound influence on American psychiatry.

He coined the term " Mental Hygiene " and was a member of the Eugenics society .

literature

• Literature on Adolf Meyer in the catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Adolf Meyer: Fundamental conceptions of dementia praecox . A contribution to the discussion in the Psychology Section at the Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association, Toronto, August 1906
• Eunice E. Winters (Ed.): The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1950–1952, 4 volumes: Neurology, Psychiatry, Medicine, Mental Hygiene.
• Eunice E. Winters, Anna Mae Bowers (Eds.): Psychobiology: a Science of Man . Charles C Thomas, Springfield IL 1957. Based on the Thomas W. Salmon Memorial Lecture given by Meyer in 1931.
• Adolf Meyer: Commonsense Psychiatry of Dr. Adolf Meyer . Fifty Two Selected Papers (Mental Illness and Social Policy the American Experience)
• Ruth Leys, Rand B. Evans: Defining American Psychology: the Correspondence Between Adolf Meyer and Edward Bradford Titchener . The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 1990.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ " Pappenheim emigrated to the USA via Palestine , where she got to know American psychoanalysis from one of the leading US psychiatrists, Adolf Meyer, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , although she found its analytical level to be 'primitive'." According to ORF , January 14, 2009
2. ↑ Chronicler of an escape. (PDF) Else Pappenheim and the emigration of psychoanalysis from Europe - March 2004. (No longer available online.) March 2004, archived from the original on March 19, 2014 ; accessed on March 18, 2014 .