Interchanges between psychology and psychiatry: the continental tradition

Abstract

Interchanges between psychology and psychiatry have a long tradition in Continental European psychopathology. Kraepelin received training in empirical psychology in Wundt's laboratory. He transferred methods and concepts to the special needs and problems of psychiatry which not only led to a fruitful phase of experimental psychopathological research but also, contrary to the received view, may have affected his clinical classificatory system. Bleuler's concept of schizophrenia was clearly influenced by extensive experimental research on associative processes carried out during the first decade of this century. Jaspers introduced concepts derived from hermeneutic psychology and phenomenological psychology into psychopathology. From the early 1920s until the 1950s, Gestalt psychology was the major paradigm in Continental European psychology. During this entire highly productive phase, psychologists and psychiatrists worked closely together. After the Second World War, Gestalt psychological concepts, in particular, were used by a number of psychiatrists to arrange and order psychopathological phenomena that otherwise appear to be unrelated.