Goethe: A bipolar personality? Periodicity of affective states in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as reflected by Paul Julius Möbius

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the character and etiological basis of German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s mental disorder. From 1898, German neuropsychiatrist Paul Julius Möbius developed the hypothesis that Goethe’s work provided several hints for the notion that the German poet suffered from a distinct bipolar disorder. The paper investigates Möbius’s psychopathographic study on Goethe and his hypothesis of a mood periodicity in Goethe against the mirror of modern concepts. Möbius came to the conclusion that Goethe’s illness was bipolar in character and became visible at intervals of seven years and lasted for about two years. The majority of Möbius’s contemporary psychiatric colleagues (Emil Kraepelin, Max Isserlin, Ernst Kretschmer, Josef Breuer) supported this view which has still not been convincingly challenged. In present-day terms, Möbius’s hypothesis can be best mirrored as a subclinical foundation of mood disorder. Furthermore, with his extensive study, Möbius disproved the common notion that Goethe had suffered from an illness as the result of a syphilitic infection.