Kurt Schneider was a German psychiatrist known largely for his writing on the diagnosis and understanding of schizophrenia, as well as personality disorders then known as psychopathic personalities.
17 Facts About Kurt Schneider
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Kurt Schneider began his psychiatric training in Cologne; however, his training was interrupted by the first World War, in which he served on the Western Front.
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When his post-war career began, Kurt Schneider was influenced and mentored by Max Scheler, a philosophy professor and one of the co-founders of the phenomenological movement in philosophy.
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Disgusted by the developing tide of psychiatric eugenics championed by the Nazi Party, Kurt Schneider left the institute, but did serve as a doctor for the German armed forces during World War II.
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Kurt Schneider was appointed Dean of the Medical School at Heidelberg University and remained there until his retirement in 1955.
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Kurt Schneider was concerned with improving the method of diagnosis in psychiatry.
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Kurt Schneider contributed to diagnostic procedures and the definition of disorders in the following areas of psychiatry:.
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Kurt Schneider coined the terms endogenous depression, derived from Emil Kraepelin's use of the adjective to mean biological in origin, and reactive depression, more usually seen in outpatients, in 1920.
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Kurt Schneider was concerned with differentiating schizophrenia from other forms of psychosis, by listing the psychotic symptoms that are particularly characteristic of schizophrenia.
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Kurt Schneider played a key role in developing concepts of psychopathy, used in a broad sense to mean personality disorder or particularly the connotation of Gemutlose psychopathy with antisocial personality disorder.
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Kurt Schneider published the influential 'The Psychopathic Personalities' in 1923.
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Kurt Schneider sought to put psychopathy diagnoses on a morally neutral and scientific footing.
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Kurt Schneider defined abnormal personality as a statistical deviation from the norm, vaguely conceptualised.
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Kurt Schneider thought very creative or intelligent people had abnormal personalities by definition, but defined the psychopathic personality as those who suffered from their abnormal personality or caused suffering to society because of it.
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Kurt Schneider did not see these as mental illnesses as such - thus adding to a divide, contrary to Eugen Bleuler for example, between those considered psychotic and those considered psychopathic.
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Nevertheless, Kurt Schneider is considered to not exactly have succeeded in his attempted and claimed production of a value-free non-judgmental diagnostic system.
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For example, Kurt Schneider admitted that the 'suffering of society' was a 'totally subjective' and 'teleological' criterion for defining psychopathic personalities, but said that in 'scientific studies' this could be avoided by operating by the broader statistical category of abnormal personalities, which he believed were always congenital and therefore largely hereditary.