Tracing the Roots of Dementia Praecox: The Emergence of Verrücktheit as a Primary Delusional-Hallucinatory Psychosis in German Psychiatry From 1860 to 1880.

Schizophrenia Bulletin
Kenneth S Kendler

Abstract

While the roots of mania and melancholia can be traced to the 18th century and earlier, we have no such long historical narrative for dementia praecox (DP). I, here, provide part of that history, beginning with Kraepelin's chapter on Verrücktheit for his 1883 first edition textbook, which, over the ensuing 5 editions, evolved into Kraepelin's mature concepts of paranoia and paranoid DP. That chapter had 5 references published from 1865 to 1879 when delusional-hallucinatory syndromes in Germany were largely understood as secondary syndromes arising from prior episodes of melancholia and mania in the course of a unitary psychosis. Each paper challenged that view supporting a primary Verrücktheit as a disorder that should exist alongside mania and melancholia. The later authors utilized faculty psychology, noting that primary Verrücktheit resulted from a fundamental disorder of thought or cognition. In particular, they argued that, while delusions in mania and melancholia were secondary, arising from primary mood changes, in Verrücktheit, delusions were primary with observed changes in mood resulting from, and not causing, the delusions. In addition to faculty psychology, these nosologic changes were based on the common-sense conc...Continue Reading

References

Jan 1, 1970·Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences·F M Albrecht
Mar 1, 1994·History of Psychiatry·G E Berrios, D Beer
Oct 31, 2003·Lancet·Bill Bynum
Aug 7, 2008·Australasian Psychiatry : Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists·David Healy
Mar 1, 2009·History of Psychiatry·Ewald Hecker, Abdullah Kraam
May 4, 2016·The American Journal of Psychiatry·Kenneth S Kendler
Feb 9, 2020·Molecular Psychiatry·Kenneth S Kendler

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Citations

Jul 31, 2020·Zhurnal nevrologii i psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova·A B SmulevichE I Voronova
Nov 21, 2020·Psychological Medicine·Kenneth S Kendler

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