These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Dreyfus and the shift of melancholia in Kraepelin's textbooks from an involutional to a manic-depressive illness.
    Author: Kendler KS, Engstrom EJ.
    Journal: J Affect Disord; 2020 Jun 01; 270():42-50. PubMed ID: 32275219.
    Abstract:
    BACKGROUND: In the 1899 6th edition of Kraepelin's textbook, wherein he first articulated his concept of manic-depressive insanity (MDI), "Melancholia" was not part of MDI but remained within separate involutional disorders. In his 1913 8th edition, involutional melancholia (IM) was incorporated into MDI due largely to a study he commissioned - a 1907 monograph written by Dreyfus: "Melancholia: A Picture of Manic-Depressive Insanity." METHOD: Through close readings of the relevant texts, we describe, in five sections, what happened. RESULTS: First, we review Kraepelin's initial position on the IM-MDI relationship, noting that his distinction was based on differences in symptoms, course of illness and outcome. Second, we examine the generally critical reception of Kraepelin's views in the psychiatry of his day. Third, we review the critical 1907 monograph in which Dreyfus examined and followed up all cases of IM diagnosed by Kraepelin while in Heidelberg. The results, he concluded, did not support any of Kraepelin's critical distinctions between the two syndromes. Fourth, we examine contemporary responses to Dreyfus's monograph, including Kraepelin's subsequent change of opinion. Finally, we review the overall process putting it in the context of the history of psychiatric nosology generally, and specifically, the nosologic project of Kraepelin. CONCLUSIONS: More than 60 years before the proposed use of validators to address nosologic questions in psychiatry by Robins and Guze, Dreyfus utilized three of their five validators to address the IM-MDI distinction: i) clinical description, ii) delimitation from other disorders and iii) follow-up studies.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]