Roland Kuhn

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Roland Kuhn (born March 4, 1912 in Biel ; † October 10, 2005 in Scherzingen , reformed , resident in Bern ) was a Swiss psychiatrist .

Life

Roland Kuhn was born on March 4, 1912 in Biel as the son of the bookseller and publisher Ernst Kuhn and Alice née Schneider. After attending school in Biel, Kuhn began studying medicine in Bern and Paris , which he completed in 1937 with the academic degree of Dr. med. completed.

Subsequently, Kuhn worked as an assistant doctor at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Waldau Bern until 1939 , then as a senior physician at the Psychiatric Clinic in Münsterlingen , where he was director from 1971 to 1980. Then he ran a private practice in Scherzingen. In addition , he completed his habilitation in 1957 at the University of Zurich , where he taught as adjunct professor from 1966 .

Kuhn is the discoverer of the antidepressant effects of imipramine .

Roland Kuhn was married to the psychiatrist Verena Gebhart-Kuhn. He died on October 10, 2005, five months before he would have turned 94 in Scherzingen.

Act

Roland Kuhn is considered a pioneer in Rorschach research . During his active service , he set up the aeromedical aptitude tests for pilots. In 1956 he discovered the first antidepressant . In addition, he dealt with the analysis of existence . He also gave numerous lectures and published over 190 scientific papers.

criticism

Criticism of Kuhn's work came years after his death and the circumstances of his research became public. From 1946 to the 1980s, Kuhn carried out clinical tests on well over 1,600 people in the Münsterlingen Psychiatric Clinic. These took place under ethically questionable and scientifically dubious conditions; In addition, the consent of the affected patients was missing . Dozens of substances, such as antidepressants, were tested under his direction.

According to observers , Roland Kuhn made his first medical attempt on his own mother. She suffered from a goiter, an enlarged thyroid gland. Without her knowledge, Kuhn mixed seaweed containing iodine into the tea, whereupon the goiter disappeared. "I made her believe that the homeopath had cured her," he wrote later, according to the observer .

In order to work through the history of the Münsterlingen Psychiatric Clinic, the Canton of Thurgau approved CHF 160,000 at the end of 2013.

Works (selection)

  • The Rorschach experiment in German with forms in psychiatry, 1940
  • On Mental Hygiene, 1961
  • Child psychiatry in the canton of Thurgau, 1966
  • Psychiatry with a future, 2004

Honors

Movie

  • On the seaside. The drug trials of Münsterlingen. Documentation, Switzerland 2018, 50 minutes. First broadcast on October 23, 2018 on 3sat .

literature

  • Psychiatry in self-expression. Published by Ludwig Jakob Pongratz. 1977, pp. 219-257.
  • 150 years of Münsterlingen. Edited by Jürg Ammann, Karl Studer. 1990. (With bibliography )
  • Mario König , Marietta Maier, Magaly Tornay: Test case Münsterlingen. Clinical trials in psychiatry 1904–1980. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-0340-1545-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary from Nature with a description of the chance discovery
  2. ↑ Münsterlingen: Everything is much worse ( Memento from November 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), Thurgauer Zeitung , October 31, 2016.
  3. ↑ Simone Rau: The extent of the Medi trials in Münsterlingen is far greater. In: Der Bund , October 31, 2016.
  4. ↑ Over 1600 human experiments in Münsterlingen. Tages-Anzeiger , February 9, 2014, accessed October 31, 2016.
  5. ^ Psychiatry - The human experiments of Münsterlingen. Observer.
personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Biel
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 2005
Place of death Joking