Emil Kraepelin

Emil Kraepelin , 1856-1926, German psychiatrist, educated at Würzburg (M.D., 1878). He also studied under Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, and was appointed professor of psychiatry at the Univ. of Dorpat, Heidelberg (1891) and Münich (1903), where he also directed a clinic. Kraepelin authored nine editions of a textbook which classified mental diseases according to their cause, symptomatology, course, final stage, and pathological anatomical findings, producing a system of classification which has relevance even today. He established the clinical pictures of dementia praecox (now known as schizophrenia ) in 1893, and of manic-depressive psychosis (now known as bipolar disorder ) in 1899, after analyzing thousands of case histories. Kraepelin was concerned only with diagnostic classification, and did not accept the theory of unconscious mental activity postulated by psychoanalysts. His classification of mental disorders served as the foundation for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), the standard reference text used by psychiatrists today. His major work is his Textbook of Psychiatry (9th ed. 1927).