Eric J. Engstrom – författare

The psychiatric profession in Germany changed radically from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. In a book that demonstrates his extensive archival knowledge and an impressive command of the primary literature, Eric J. Engstrom investigates the history of university psychiatric clinics in Imperial Germany from 1867 to 1914, emphasizing the clinical practices and professional debates surrounding the development of these institutions and their impact on the course of German psychiatry.The rise of university psychiatric clinics reflects, Engstrom tells us, a shift not only in asylum culture, but also in the ways in which social, political, and economic issues deeply influenced the practice of psychiatry. Equally convincing is Engstrom's argument that psychiatrists were responding to and working to shape the rapidly changing perceptions of madness in Imperial Germany. In a series of case studies, the book focuses on a number of important clinical spaces such as the laboratory, the ward, the lecture hall, and the polyclinic. Engstrom argues that within these spaces clinics developed their own disciplinary economies and that their emergence was inseparably intertwined with jurisdictional contests between competing scientific, administrative, didactic, and sociopolitical agendas.

Gerhart Zeller’s prize-winning 1961 study of the history of the concept of unitary psychosis has never before been published in German or English. To date, the manuscript remains by far the best historical account of the early development of the concept in Germany.The editors’ introduction analyzes Zeller’s monograph on three temporal levels. First, as a rediscovered original contribution to historical scholarship on nineteenth century psychiatric classification. Second, as an historical document in its own right, situated on the threshold between the murderous atrocities of the Holocaust and the psychiatric reforms of the 1970s and ’80s (Psychiatrie-Enquête). Third, as a unique contribution to post-Neo-Kraepelinian discourse and to the critiques of contemporary psychiatric nosologies (DSM) and research agendas (RDoC). In helping to elucidate the historical evolution of dimensional approaches to psychiatric classification, the monograph is likely to resonate within wider current biomedical trends toward personalized medicine and molecular diagnostics, and to find a readership among psychiatric practitioners and historians alike.