Sigbert Josef Maria Ganser (24 January 1853, Rhaunen,

Rhine Province The Rhine Province (), also known as Rhenish Prussia () or synonymous with the Rhineland (), was the westernmost Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. ...

– 4 January 1931,

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

) was a German

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

born in Rhaunen. He earned his medical doctorate in 1876 from the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

. Afterwards he worked briefly at a psychiatric clinic in

Würzburg Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is, after Nuremberg and Fürth, the Franconia#Towns and cities, third-largest city in Franconia located in the north of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. It sp ...

, and later as an assistant to

neuroanatomist Neuroanatomy is the study of the structure and organization of the nervous system. In contrast to animals with radial symmetry, whose nervous system consists of a distributed network of cells, animals with bilateral symmetry have segregated, defin ...

Bernhard von Gudden (1824-1886) in

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. In 1886, he became head of the psychiatric department at

General Hospital. Among his students was

neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

Hans Queckenstedt (1876-1918). Sigbert Ganser is remembered for a hysterical disorder that he first described in 1898. He identified the disorder in three prisoners while working at a prison in Halle. The features included approximate or nonsensical answers to simple questions, perceptual abnormalities, and clouding of consciousness. Ganser believed that these symptoms were an associative reaction caused by an unconscious attempt by the patient to escape from an intolerable mental situation. The disorder was to become known as

Ganser syndrome Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions and other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased sta ...

Written works

* ''Über einen eigenartigen hysterischen Dämmerzustand'' Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, Berlin, 1898, 30: 633–640. English translation by C.E. Schorer: "A peculiar hysterical state". British Journal of Criminology, 1965, 5: 120–126. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder. 3rd edition, Washington, American Psychiatric Association, D. C., 1987, pp. 77.Ganser's syndrome
@ Who Named It

Notes

External links

Emedicine
(discussion about Ganser Syndrome) 1853 births 1931 deaths Prussian physicians 19th-century German physicians German psychiatrists People from Oldenburg (state) Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni History of psychiatry {{Germany-psychiatrist-stub