Eugen Bleuler facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Eugen Bleuler
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Eugen Bleuler around 1900
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Paul Eugen Bleuler
30 April 1857 Zollikon, Switzerland
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| Died | 15 July 1939 (aged 82) Zollikon, Switzerland
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| Nationality | Swiss |
| Alma mater | University of Zürich |
| Known for | Coining the terms schizophrenia, schizoid, autism |
| Spouse(s) | Hedwig Bleuler–Waser |
| Children | 5 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychiatry |
| Institutions | Rheinau-Zürich clinic Burghölzli clinic University of Zürich |
| Doctoral advisors | Jean-Martin Charcot Bernhard von Gudden |
| Doctoral students | Manfred Bleuler Carl Jung |
| Other notable students | Medard Boss |
| Influences | August Forel Sigmund Freud Gottlieb Burckhardt |
| Influenced | Carl Jung Hermann Rorschach |
Paul Eugen Bleuler (born April 30, 1857 – died July 15, 1939) was a Swiss psychiatrist. He was a very important person in understanding mental illness. He created several terms used in psychiatry today. These include "schizophrenia", "schizoid", and "autism". He also helped explain the idea of "ambivalence", which is when you have mixed feelings about something.
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About Eugen Bleuler
Eugen Bleuler was born in Zollikon, a town near Zürich in Switzerland. His father, Johann Rudolf Bleuler, was a rich farmer. Eugen married Hedwig Bleuler–Waser, who was one of the first women to earn a doctorate degree from the University of Zurich.
His Work and Career
Bleuler studied medicine in Zürich. He then trained to become a psychiatrist at Waldau Hospital from 1881 to 1884. After this, he traveled for a year to learn more about medicine. He visited Paris, Munich, and London. When he came back to Zürich, he worked at the Burghölzli, a university hospital.
Later, Bleuler became the director of a psychiatric clinic in Rheinau. This hospital was in an old monastery on an island. At that time, the clinic was not very good, so Bleuler worked hard to make things better for the patients there.
In 1898, Bleuler returned to the Burghölzli hospital. He became a professor of psychiatry there and also continued to direct the mental asylum in Rheinau until 1927. At these hospitals, Bleuler took care of patients who had mental health conditions for a long time. He also started using and researching psychoanalytic treatment, which was influenced by Sigmund Freud.
During his time as director at Burghölzli, Bleuler made big discoveries in psychiatry and psychology. These discoveries made him one of the most important Swiss psychiatrists.
Working with Freud and Jung
Bleuler was very interested in hypnotism, which led him to learn about Sigmund Freud's work. He thought highly of a book written by Josef Breuer and Freud called Studies on Hysteria.
Like Freud, Bleuler believed that some complex mental processes happen without us knowing it. He encouraged his team at Burghölzli to study these hidden mental processes and psychotic conditions. Because of Bleuler's influence, Carl Jung and Franz Riklin used word association tests. They wanted to connect Freud's ideas about hidden thoughts with real psychological findings. Bleuler even worked with Freud on his own self-analysis starting in 1905. Bleuler and Jung helped create a more hopeful view for people with psychotic disorders.
However, Bleuler felt that Freud's group was too strict. He left the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1911. He wrote to Freud that an "all or nothing" approach was good for religious groups or political parties, but not for science. Even so, Bleuler remained interested in Freud's work. He often mentioned Freud in his Textbook of Psychiatry (1916) and even supported Freud for the Nobel Prize later on.
Understanding Schizophrenia
Bleuler first used the word "schizophrenia" in a lecture in Berlin on April 24, 1908. But he and his colleagues had already been using the term in Zurich since 1907. They used it instead of Emil Kraepelin's term "dementia praecox." Bleuler explained and expanded his idea of schizophrenia in his important study from 1911, called Dementia Praecox, oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien.
Bleuler explained that schizophrenia has different types of symptoms:
- Positive symptoms: These are things that people without the condition usually don't experience, like seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations) or having strong false beliefs (delusions).
- Negative symptoms: These describe when typical experiences are missing, like social withdrawal or not feeling pleasure.
He also talked about basic and accessory symptoms. Basic symptoms are always present in schizophrenia, while accessory symptoms can be different for each patient. He also defined primary symptoms as those directly linked to brain processes, and secondary symptoms as how a person reacts to the primary symptoms. Understanding these different symptoms helped people learn more about schizophrenia.
Bleuler believed that schizophrenia was a physical disease. He thought that people were never completely "cured" of it, and there would always be some lasting effects. However, unlike Kraepelin, Bleuler believed that the future for people with schizophrenia was not always bad. He thought that "dementia" (a decline in mental ability) was a secondary symptom, not directly caused by the main biological problem. He identified three other "fundamental symptoms": problems with thinking clearly, changes in emotions, and ambivalence (mixed feelings).
Bleuler's new ideas about schizophrenia were accepted in countries like Switzerland and Britain. At first, some countries, like Germany, did not accept them. But over time, Bleuler's concept became widely accepted because Kraepelin's ideas didn't always match what was seen in patients.
In 1911, Bleuler wrote that when the disease gets worse, it's more accurate to say it's a "deteriorating attack" rather than a "recurrence." He knew that "recurrence" sounded more comforting to patients and their families.
In 1917, Bleuler looked into how schizophrenia might be passed down in families. He agreed that having a family member with schizophrenia could increase someone's chance of having the disease. However, Bleuler thought that some studies on this topic didn't use good enough methods. He concluded that the gene for schizophrenia was not a simple dominant trait. Instead, he thought it involved a complex gene and could show up in different ways.
Bleuler believed that several things had to come together for schizophrenia to appear in a person. He found that many different symptoms could lead to a diagnosis. He also concluded that some parts of the disease, like certain behaviors and positive symptoms (hallucinations, delusions), are not passed down through genes.
He thought that the main features of the disease came from a split between a person's emotions and their thinking. He also believed that patients should leave the hospital early and go back into the community to avoid staying in institutions for too long.
Other Contributions
Bleuler was known for carefully observing his patients and letting their symptoms guide his understanding. He was also known for writing clearly about his ideas.
Later in his life, Bleuler studied "psychoids." He described a psychoid as the ability to react and adapt to things, which creates lasting changes in the brain and affects future reactions. Bleuler believed psychoids helped with mental development. He also suggested that our social, mental, and physical parts of life are not separate but are all connected as part of one life principle. These ideas were not very popular with other scientists at the time.
See also
In Spanish: Eugen Bleuler para niños
- Bleuler's psycho syndrome
- Emil Kraepelin
- Hermann Rorschach
- Pierre Janet
- Wilhelm Wundt
