The reception of Eugen Bleuler in British psychiatry, 1892-1954

Abstract

This article draws on over 60 years of British medical journals and psychiatry textbooks to indicate the chronological stages of the reception of Eugen Bleuler in British psychiatry. Bleuler was already well known in Britain before his schizophrenia book appeared, with the journals containing numerous references, mainly positive, to his work. The psychiatry textbooks, however, were slower to integrate his contribution. This paper argues that this was not due to Bleuler’s placing Freud on a par with Kraepelin, but because of the early negative reaction to Kraepelin’s dementia praecox concept, despite Bleuler’s wider and less ominous conception of the illness.