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Abstract

Karl Kahlbaum (1828—99) introduced the concept of time into European psychiatric nosology. In 1863 he first expressed the view that disease definition should take into account the course of the disease, the extension to which psychological functions were compromised, the relevance of the period of life when the mental disorder first appeared, and its primary or secondary nature. Via E. Kraepelin these ideas have moulded the way in which mental disorder has been conceived ever since. And yet Kahlbaum never made it into academic psychiatry. For reasons which remain obscure, he did not obtain a university teaching position and had to spend the rest of his life in private psychiatry. Whether the novelty of his ideas irked contemporary psychiatric officialdom needs further study.

Keywords

classification Kahlbaum Kraepelin nosology psychiatry psychopathology time unitar y psychosis

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`The clinico-diagnostic perspective in psychopathology'

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