Bleuler, Eugen (1857–1939)

Swiss psychiatrist who introduced the concept of schizophrenia in 1911. He was professor of psychiatry at Zürich 1888–1927, where he studied the psychological aspects of mental disorder, using both the experimental methods of Wilhelm Wundt and the psychoanalytical procedures and theories of Sigmund Freud. Later he became critical of psychoanalytic theory.

Bleuler was born in Zolliken, near Zürich, and studied at Zürich, Bern, and Munich, qualifying in medicine in 1883. His publications include Affektivitat, Suggestibilitat, Paranoia/Affectivity, Suggestibility, Paranoia (1906) and Dementia Praecox oder die Gruppe der Schizophrenien/Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (1911), in which he showed that the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin's dementia praecox should include all the schizophrenic disorders. He also wrote on the psychopathology of hallucinations, a textbook of psychiatry (1916), and Naturgeschichte der Seele/Natural History of the Soul (1932).