Paul Eugen Bleuler

Born: April 30, 1857, Zollikon, Switzerland.

Died: June 15, 1939, Zollikon, Switzerland.

Interests: clinical pathology and psychotherapy.

Education: Doctor of Medicine, University of Zurich.

Professional career: doctor in a psychiatric hospital in Zurich Rheinau, 1886; professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich, Director of the Psychiatric Clinic and University Hospital, Byurgoltsli, 1898-1927.

Bleuler is known mainly to the fact that the first of the prominent psychiatrists outside of Austria recognized the importance of the work of Sigmund Freud. Really, . around 1904 he pushed Carl Jung, . who was his assistant from 1900 to 1909, . to use Freud's theory in the therapy, . thus bringing Jung to write his most important articles and contributed to the ensuing alliance between Jung and Freud,
.

He is also responsible for the drastic change in thinking about the phenomenon, now known as schizophrenia. He rejected Krepelina term "dementia praecox", because that meant the irreversible state, not treatable. Bleuler defined schizophrenia as a weakening of the links that lead to the disintegration of the personality for some time and in some respects. He tried to make dictionary features describing schizophrenia, come here "neologisms", "verbal salad" and "negative speech". Bleuler added the category of simple schizophrenia in three categories Krepelina (hebephrenia, paranoia, catatonia). By 1916, he developed further the concept of autism (loss of contact with reality), and ambivalence (mutually exclusive contradictions that exist simultaneously on the intellectual and emotional or volitional level) and enriched her understanding of schizophrenia.

Some see the works of Bleuler as the anticipation of the existential movement, as one of his students was Ludwig Binswanger. Other prominent figures in Byurgoltsli while working there were Rorschach Bleuler, Piaget, Adolf Meyer and Karl Abraham. The beginning of his career Bleuler also studied hypnosis under Charcot at Salpetriere Hospital.