Content area
Full Text
Psychiatr Q (2007) 78:237240
DOI 10.1007/s11126-007-9036-0
ORIGINAL PAPER
Katharina Trede, M.D.
Published online: 30 March 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract The year 2006 marked the 150th Birthday of Emil Kraepelin and Sigmund Freud. Kraepelin and Freud were two very different yet very similar men. The comparison between their biographies shows many parallels in their lives and personalities. They were, in their time, the two most inuential individuals in psychiatry. They wrote and thought about similar topics in the eld yet came to quite different conclusions. Both did not show public respect for each other but wrote about the importance of integrating their respective approaches into the study of the mind/brain problem. Psychiatry today continues to struggle with the integration of the biological and psychodynamic approach.
Keywords Biographies Contemporaries Dualism Freud Kraepelin
The year 2006 marked the 150th Birthday of Emil Kraepelin (15 February 1856) and Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856). While they were in their time the two most inuential individuals in psychiatry, Freud and Kraepelin never met. Could their non-existent relationship be a seen as a metaphor for the difculties psychiatry encounters when it attempts to integrate the mind and brain?
Kraepelin and Freud were prodigy sons from families with no academic tradition. Kraepelin started out by focusing on experimental psychology while Freud was pursuing studies in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurology. What if Kraepelin had not been so deeply in love and so anxious to get married? His passion was experimental psychology and philosophy and he wanted to pursue an academic career in those two elds. But he needed a job in order to be able to support his future wife and children. So he took a clinical position and accepted an invitation to write a textbook. This textbook became Kraepelins life work. What if Freud had not been so deeply in love and so anxious to get
K. Trede, M.D. (&)
Valley Mental Health Center, 1020 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101, USA e-mail: [email protected]
150 Years of Freud-Kraepelin Dualism
123
238 Psychiatr Q (2007) 78:237240
married? He was interested in biology and in basic science, but he could not nd a sufciently remunerated position in that area to be able to get married. He therefore decided to become...