Klaus Conrad (19 June 1905 in Reichenberg – 5 May 1961 in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

) was a

Sudeten German German Bohemians ( ; ), later known as Sudeten Germans ( ; ), were ethnic Germans living in the Czech lands of the Bohemian Crown, which later became an integral part of Czechoslovakia. Before 1945, over three million German Bohemians constitu ...

neurologist and psychiatrist who conducted research on German soldiers who were hospitalised with

mental health Mental health is often mistakenly equated with the absence of mental illness. However, mental health refers to a person's overall emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences how individuals think, feel, and behave, and how t ...

symptoms on the Eastern Front during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Aaron Mishara has claimed that his work constituted an important contributions to

neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...

and

psychopathology Psychopathology is the study of mental illness. It includes the signs and symptoms of all mental disorders. The field includes Abnormal psychology, abnormal cognition, maladaptive behavior, and experiences which differ according to social norms ...

. He joined the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

(NSDAP) in 1940. He had a post war career as a professor of psychiatry and neurology, and director of the University Psychiatric Hospital in Göttingen from 1958 until his death. Conrad's main work: ''Die beginnende Schizophrenie: Versuch einer Gestaltanalyse des Wahns (1958)'', describes the early state 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 ...

and the typical schizophrenic aspects. From this monograph, terms as "Trema", "Apophänie" ( apophany), and "Überstieg" were coined. Frank Fish, who had reviewed Conrad's book in 1960, used Conrad's approach in a neuropsychiatric case report the same year. An English language summary of Conrad's work and its influence was published in 2010 by Mishara.

References

1905 births 1961 deaths German psychiatrists Physicians in the Nazi Party Neuropsychologists German neurologists Schizophrenia researchers {{Germany-psychiatrist-stub