Between Kraepelin and Freud: the integrative psychiatry of August Hoch

Abstract

Through examination of the career of the psychiatrist August Hoch (1868—1919), this essay challenges two assumptions implicit in histories of US progressive-era psychiatry: that the emergence of Freudian psychoanalysis signalled a devaluation of Kraepelin's contributions and that theoretical and therapeutic eclecticism inhibited psychiatric research. Locating Hoch's guiding principles within the context of Kraepelin's clinical psychiatry, I analyse how Hoch mediated the demands of classification and the dynamic understanding of persons in prosecuting a new kind of clinical research that would not have been possible within either the Kraepelinian or Freudian perspective alone.