Eugene Bleuler

Eugene Bleuler (b. 30 April, 1857 - d. 9 February, 1940) was a Swiss psychiatrist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and the naming of schizophrenia.

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Bleuler was born in Zollikon, a small town near Z?rich in Switzerland. He studied medicine in Z?rich, and later studied in Paris, London and Munich after which he returned to Z?rich to take a post as an intern at the Burgh?lzli, a university hospital.

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In 1886 Bleuler became the director of a psychiatric clinic at Rheinau, a hospital located in an old monastery on an island in the Rhine. Rheinau was noted at the time for being backward, and Bleuler set about improving conditions for the patients resident there.

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Bleuler returned to the Burgh?lzli in 1898 to be appointed director, where notably he employed Carl Gustav Jung as an intern.

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Bleuler is particularly notable for naming schizophrenia, a disorder which was previously known as dementia praecox. Bleuler realised the condition was neither a dementia, nor did it always occur in young people (praecox meaning early) and so gave the condition the name from the Greek for split (schizo) and mind (phrene).

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The Oxford English Dictionary states that Bleuler also named autism in a 1912 edition of the American Journal of Insanity.

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Interestingly, and against the Kraepelinian view popular at the time, Bleuler did not believe that there was a clear separation between sanity and madness.

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30 April: REDIRECT April 30...

1857: 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar)....

9 February: REDIRECT February 9...

Eugene Bleuler related Images and Photos (experimental)

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