Kurt Schneider

For other people named Kurt Schneider, see Kurt Schneider (disambiguation).

Kurt Schneider (7 January 1887 – 27 October 1967) was a German psychiatrist known largely for his writing on the diagnosis and understanding of schizophrenia.

Biography

Schneider was born in Crailsheim, Kingdom of Württemberg, and trained in medicine in Berlin and Tübingen. He was drafted for military service in World War I and later obtained a postgraduate qualification in psychiatry. In 1931 he became director of the Psychiatric Research Institute in Munich, which was previously founded by Emil Kraepelin.

Disgusted by the developing tide of psychiatric eugenics championed by the Nazi Party, Schneider left the institute and served as an army doctor during World War II. After the war, anti-Nazi academics were appointed to serve in, and rebuild Germany's medical institutions and Schneider was given the post of Dean of the Medical School at Heidelberg University. Schneider kept this post until his retirement in 1955.

Contributions to psychiatry

Schneider was concerned with improving the method of diagnosis in psychiatry. Like Karl Jaspers, he particularly championed diagnoses based on the form, rather than the content of a sign or symptom. For example, he argued that a delusion should not be diagnosed by the content of the belief, but by the way in which a belief is held.

He coined the terms endogenous depression, derived from Emil Kraepelin's use of the adjective for biological in origin, and reactive depression, more usually seen in outpatients, in 1920.^[1]

First-rank symptoms

He was also concerned with differentiating schizophrenia from other forms of psychosis, by listing the psychotic symptoms that are particularly characteristic of schizophrenia. These have become known as Schneiderian First-Rank Symptoms or simply, first-rank symptoms.^[2]

These were:

• Audible thoughts (thought echo)
• Voices heard arguing
• Voices heard commenting on one's actions
• Somatic/thought passivity experiences (delusions of control)
• Thought withdrawal
• Thought insertion - Thoughts are ascribed to other people who intrude their thoughts upon the patient
• Thought broadcasting (also called thought diffusion)
• Delusional perception (i.e. taking a normal sensory perception to mean a bizarre situation such as taking seeing an aeroplane as indicating the patient should be the next president)

The reliability of using first-rank symptoms for the diagnosis of schizophrenia has since been questioned,^[3] although the terms might still be used descriptively by mental health professionals who do not use them as diagnostic aids.

A memory device that is frequently used to remember the first rank symptoms is ABCD: Auditory hallucinations, Broadcasting of thought, Controlled thought (delusions of control), Delusional perception.

See also

• Karl Jaspers
• Schizophrenia

References

1. ^ Schneider, Kurt (1920). "Zeitschrift für die gesante". Neurol Psychiatr 59: 281–86. 
2. ^ Schneider, K. Clinical Psychopathology. New York: Grune and Stratton. 1959.
3. ^ Bertelsen A (2002). "Schizophrenia and related disorders: experience with current diagnostic systems.". Psychopathology 35 (2-3): 89–93. PMID 12145490. 

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Name	Schneider, Kurt
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Date of birth	7 January 1887
Place of birth
Date of death	27 October 1967
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