How Kraepelinian was Kraepelin? How Kraepelinian are the neo-Kraepelinians? — from Emil Kraepelin to DSM-III

Abstract

The contents of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) can only be understood by studying aspects of the last one hundred years of psychiatric history. This paper deals with: (1) three aspects of Kraepelinian psychiatry — descriptive psychiatry, Kraepelin's devotion to empirical research and his inability always to carry it through, and his anti-psychoanalytic stance; (2) the optimistic yet troubled state of American psychiatry in the period 1946 to 1974; (3) the work of the so-called `neo-Kraepelinians', especially that of Eli Robins, Samuel Guze and George Winokur; and (4) Robert Spitzer and the making of DSM-III.