Psychopathy. Application and significance of the psychiatric concept of personality disorders in clinicians and experts practice (1918-1969)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 283880665

The goal is to analyse and elaborate on the scope of application and the meaning of the medical term psychopathy in the clinicians and experts practice by approaching this psychiatric concept from different perspectives. A significant increase of psychopathy diagnoses can be observed after the First World War in the psychiatric patient records of the Hamburg Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg. Using specifically selected years taken from the Hamburg records of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, analyses shall be carried out on the means employed in dealing with this concept as well as on the development of the term and its functions. The focus is particularly on knowledge production (records, written professional opinions, publications). In addition to the institutional level of the investigation (Friedrichsberg), this aspect especially should be examined at a second level directly related to practice, namely using the example of the psychiatrist Albrecht Langelüddeke (1889-1977) who first worked at Friedrichsberg between 1918 and 1935 and later became director of the Landesheilanstalt Marburg /L. He documented an extraordinarily high number of expert reports. His career exemplifies in detail the development of the term psychopathy as used by an individual psychiatrist over several decades. Langelüddekes prominent position as an official expert on psychiatry after 1945 extends the thematic dimension of the project to the late 1960s, i.e. until the so-called castration law was passed in 1969.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants