Emil Kraepelin

Author Code: GEKX

Educated at the universities of Leipzig and Wurzburg, Kraepelin recived his M.D. in 1878. He then worked on his PhD at the University of Munich and by this time had already developed many of ideas regarding psychiatry. In 1882, he worked under Wilhelm Wundt in the psychopharmacology laboratory at the University of Leipzig and the following year published the first edition of his Compendium der Psychiatrie. In 1884, he was appointed senior physician at Leubus and, after a further year as director of the Treatment and Nursing Institute in Dresden, he was named professor of psychiatry at the University of Dorpat. In 1890, he moved to the position of department head at the University of Heidelberg. Kraepelin believed in genetic and physical disorders being the cause of mental illness and in this regard differed greatly from the Freudian school popular at the time. In 1904, he became the director of the Munich psychiatric clinic and continued his teaching in the psychiatric department there. Among his students was Alois Alzheimer. Kraepelin is credited with developing the concepts of dementia praecox (or Schizophrenia as it was renamed by Bleuler), manic depression and as a co-discoverer of Alzheimer's Disease. Today Kraepelin is considered to be the father of modern scientific psychiatry as well as psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics. He was also an avid poet during most of his life and his poems were collected and published after his death. In addition to the numerous editions of his Compendium, his works include Uber Gestige Arbeit (1894), Lebenserinnerungen (1906), General Paresis (1913) and One Hundred Years of Psychiatry (1917).