Manfred Bleuler (4 January 1903 – 4 November 1994) was a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

physician and psychiatrist. Following in the footsteps of his father, doctoral supervisor, and colleague,

Eugen Bleuler Paul Eugen Bleuler ( ; ; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939) was a Swiss psychiatrist and eugenicist most notable for his influence on modern concepts of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", " schizoid", "a ...

, Manfred Bleuler was devoted primarily to the study and treatment of

schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...

. For his contributions, he received the Stanley R. Dean Award in 1970 and the

Marcel Benoist Prize The Marcel Benoist Prize, offered by the Marcel Benoist Foundation, is a monetary prize that has been offered annually since 1920 to a scientist of Swiss nationality or residency who has made the most useful scientific discovery. Emphasis is pl ...

in 1972.

Biography

Bleuler studied medicine at the

University of Zurich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

as well as in

Kiel Kiel ( ; ) is the capital and most populous city in the northern Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. With a population of around 250,000, it is Germany's largest city on the Baltic Sea. It is located on the Kieler Förde inlet of the Ba ...

and

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

. He trained at the Kantonales Krankenhaus Liestal and, mostly, in the US, at Boston Psychopathic Hospital, Boston City Hospital, and Bloomingdale Hospital in New York. In 1933, he was appointed the chief physician in the psychiatric departments at St. Pirminsberg, Pfäfers, and the University Clinic,

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

. In 1942, Bleuler became the Professor of Psychiatry at

and the Director of the University Psychiatric Clinic at

Burghölzli Burghölzli, named after the wooded hill in the district of Riesbach in southeastern Zürich where it is located, is the ''Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik Zürich'' ('Psychiatric University Hospital Zürich'), a psychiatric hospital in Switzerl ...

, where he stayed until his retirement in 1969. Manfred Bleuler has been praised as the foremost Bleuler scholar, providing valuable insight into his father's seminal ''Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias''. However, Bleuler himself greatly contributed to the study of the disorder, especially then the topics of late onset schizophrenia, chronic versus acute schizophrenia, and prognosis assessment. Perhaps the most critically, Bleuler first evaluated the impact of environmental variables on the development and outcome of schizophrenia in detail.Rosenthal, D. (1974)

Selected works

Bleuler, M. (1972) Die schizophrenen Geistesstörungen: im Lichte langjähriger Kranken und Familiengeschichten. New York: Intercontinental Medical Book Corporation (U.S. distributor). Bleuler, M., & Bleuler, R. (1986). Dementia Praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien: Eugen Bleuler. British Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 661–664.

References

1903 births 1994 deaths Swiss psychiatrists 20th-century Swiss physicians {{psychiatrist-stub