Eugen Bleuler
Paul Eugen Bleuler (/ˈblɔɪlər/;[1] German: [ˈɔɪɡeːn ˈblɔɪlər]; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939)[2] was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist[3][4] most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia",[5][6] "schizoid",[7] "autism",[8] depth psychology and what Sigmund Freud called "Bleuler's happily chosen term ambivalence".[9]
Eugen Bleuler
15 July 1939 (aged 82)
Swiss
University of Zürich
Coining the terms schizophrenia, schizoid, autism
5
Rheinau-Zürich clinic
Burghölzli clinic
University of Zürich
Manfred Bleuler
Carl Jung
Personal life[edit]
Bleuler was born in Zollikon, a town near Zürich in Switzerland, to Johann Rudolf Bleuler (1823–1898), a wealthy farmer, and Pauline Bleuler-Bleuler (1829–1898).[10] He married Hedwig Bleuler–Waser, one of the first women to receive her doctorate from the University of Zurich.[11]
Career[edit]
Bleuler studied medicine in Zürich. He trained for his psychiatric residency at Waldau Hospital under Gottlieb Burckhardt, a Swiss psychiatrist, from 1881 to 1884.[10] He left his job in 1884 and spent one year on medical study trips with Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist in Paris, Bernhard von Gudden, a German psychiatrist in Munich, and to London.[10] After these trips, he returned to Zürich to briefly work as assistant to Auguste Forel while completing his psychiatric residency at the Burghölzli, a university hospital.[12]
Bleuler became the director of a psychiatric clinic in Rheinau,[12] a hospital located in an old monastery on an island in the Rhine. At the time, the clinic was known for being functionally backward and largely ineffective. Because of this, Bleuler set about improving conditions for the patients residing there.
In the year 1898, Bleuler returned to the Burghölzli and became a psychiatry professor at Burghölzli, the same university hospital at which he completed his residency. He was also appointed director of the mental asylum in Rheinau. He served as the director from the years 1898 to 1927. While working at this asylum, Bleuler cared for long-term psychiatric patients. He also implemented both psychoanalytic treatment and research, and was influenced by Sigmund Freud.
During his time as the director of psychiatry at Burghölzli, Bleuler made great contributions to the field of psychiatry and psychology that made him known today. Given these findings, Bleuler has been described as one of the most influential Swiss psychiatrists.
Relationship with Freud and Jung[edit]
Following his interest in hypnotism, especially in its "introspective" variant,[13] Bleuler became interested in Sigmund Freud's work. He favorably reviewed Josef Breuer and Freud's Studies on Hysteria.
Like Freud, Bleuler believed that complex mental processes could be unconscious. He encouraged his staff at the Burghölzli to study unconscious and psychotic mental phenomena. Influenced by Bleuler, Carl Jung and Franz Riklin used word association tests to integrate Freud's theory of repression with empirical psychological findings. As a series of letters demonstrates, Bleuler performed a self-analysis with Freud, beginning in 1905. Bleuler laid the foundation for a less fatalistic view of the course and outcome of psychotic disorders along with C. G. Jung, who further used Bleuler's theory of ambivalence and association experiments to diagnose neurotic illnesses.[14]
Bleuler found Freud's movement to be overly dogmatic and resigned from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1911, writing to Freud that "this 'all or nothing' is in my opinion necessary for religious communities and useful for political parties...but for science I consider it harmful".[15]
Bleuler remained interested in Freud's work, citing him favorably, for example, in his often reprinted Textbook of Psychiatry (1916). He also supported the nomination of Freud for the Nobel Prize in the late twenties.[16]
Further contributions[edit]
Bleuler also explored the concept of moral idiocy,[23] and the relationship between neurosis and alcoholism.[24] He followed Freud's perspective of seeing sexuality as a potent influence upon anxiety,[25] pondered on the origins of the sense of guilt, and studied the process of what he defined as switching (the affective shift from love to hate, for example).[26]
Bleuler was known for his clinical observation and willingness to let symptoms speak for themselves. He was also known for his skillful expository writings. Bleuler has never been credited with healing his patients. Like Sigmund Freud he experimented on patients in his care; many were sterilised and many committed suicide.[27]
Later in his life, Bleuler studied and published works on psychoids. He defined the psychoid as the capacity to respond and adapt to stimuli, creating permanent changes in the brain and shaping future reactions. Bleuler believed the psychoid to be a cause of psychic development.[28] He also proposed that social, mental, and physical aspects of life are not separate from each other but instead are seen as aspects of a sole life principle. These ideas were not particularly popular among the scientific community and did not receive a great deal of attention.