Karl Jaspers: The Icon of Modern Psychiatry.

Abstract

December 2015 and March 2016 issues of the American Journal of Psychiatry contain a debate focusing on the legacy of Emil Kraepelin, widely considered one of the founders if not the iconic founder of modern scientific psychiatry. The authors, Eric J. Engstrom and Kenneth S. Kendler, challenge the so-called neo-Kraepelinian view of Kraepelin and argue that the true, historical Kraepelin was far more inclined towards scientific psychology, less reductionist and brain-centric, and more skeptical nosologically than his later followers apparently believe. Commenting upon this paper, Rael D. Strous, Annette A. Opler, and Lewis A. Opler do not question these claims per se, but rather recall and emphasize historical facts that the paper regrettably omitted: Kraepelin's avid promotion of degeneration theory, eugenics, racism, and anti-Semitism as well as his mentoring of several of the most prominent Nazi-collaborating psychiatrists. Strous, Opler and Opler go on to suggest that it is now time for psychiatry to unburden itself of any iconic indebtedness to Kraepelin. The authors of the current paper agree, and propose to replace Kraepelin with the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, MD (1883-1969) as the proper iconic founder of present-day and future psychiatry. Acknowledging our debt to Jaspers can usher in a fully humanistic and scientific psychiatric practice that can flourish as a medical discipline that is respectful of and of service to patients, beneficial for research, multiperspectival and methodologically pluralistic.