Psychiatrist Karl Leonhard

Accentuation of personality. Who first introduced this concept? This was done by Carl Leonhard, whose biography will be described in this article.

Milestones of the long journey

He was born in 1904 in Edelfeld, located in Bavaria. As a child, Karl Leonhard dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but gradually his main hobby was medicine. After graduating from university, he chose psychiatry as the direction of his work and scientific activity. The first place of his work in 1931 was the psychiatric clinic in Gabersee. A year later, Carl Leonhard, whose photo is presented in this article, becomes her chief physician. However, in 1936, he abandoned this post and moved to the Frankfurt University Clinic for Nervous Diseases and soon received a scientific degree. In 1944 he was already a freelance professor at this university. Then Carl Leonhard becomes a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Medical Academies in Erfurt and Berlin. In 1957, he began working at the Charité clinic.

Favorite Topics

Teaching at universities, Carl Leongard does not abandon his private practice. In addition to it, he is engaged in scientific research, the results of which are essays and articles. He devotes the most attention to schizophrenia. In his writings one can find the classification and the clinic of this disease. Leonhard is willingly accepted into national and international scientific communities, often he becomes their honorary member, despite the fact that some of his scientific research is not approved by other scientists. For example, his attempt to isolate cycloid psychosis into a separate disease. Whereas only depressive psychosis and schizophrenia were officially recognized. German psychiatrist Carl Leongard also studied childhood schizophrenia. He believed that the symptoms of this disease appear already in childhood. In the same period of a person's life, one can put such a diagnosis. In addition, he described the developmental disorders of intelligence.

Broad interests

Engaged in Leonhard also studying neuroses and behavioral therapy. Dedicated a lot of time to the psychopathology of human behavior. The pathologies noted by him were described in the monographs "Instincts and ancient instincts of human sexuality", as well as "Expressiveness of facial expressions, gestures and voice of man." Many works of the scientist-psychiatrist were ahead of their time. For example, those relating to the themes of involutional depression, the classification of endogenous psychoses, schizophrenia, neuroses and accentuations of character and temperament. The latter was thoroughly studied by him. Based on the study of mood disorders, Leonhardt wrote the scientific work "Accentuation of the personality." In it, he broke accentuations by types and described them. In addition, he gave a characterization to each type on the example of characters of literary heroes.

Accentuation of personality

The monograph of Karl Leonhard is divided into two parts. In the first of them, he conducts a psychological and clinical analysis of accentuated personalities. The second part consists of examples. Leonhard analyzed the characters of literary heroes born of the imagination of more than 30 writers, known throughout the world. These are the heroes of the works of Stendhal, Goethe, Balzac, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Cervantes and others. In our country, the book "Accentuated Personality" was published in 1981. Interesting it was found not only by specialists in psychiatry, but also by ordinary readers, thanks to a special style of the author's presentation. Also the monograph was translated into many languages. Among them are Romanian, Italian, English, Japanese and others.

Types of personality by Leonhard

According to the psychiatrist, there are only 10 pure personality types and several intermediate types. He divides them according to temperament, character and personal level. In his opinion, temperament is given to man by nature. There are several types of personality with temperament. Types related to the personal level: introverted and ekstventirovanny. Types related to the character: excitable (quick temper, pedantry, submission to instincts); Demonstrative (vanity, self-confidence, flattery), pedantic (conscientiousness, indecision, hypochondria); Stuck-up (suspicion, suspicion). To temperament he referred: emotional (compassion, kindness), anxious (shyness, fearfulness), dysthymic (focus on failures, fears, inhibition), effectively labile (compensation of traits, orientation to standards), effectively exalted (emotionality, enthusiasm, Sublime feelings). In addition, Leonhard gave his definitions to the extrovert and introvert, different from those previously adopted. With his light hand, they began to use psychiatrists around the world. "Accentuated persons" can be advised to read to teachers and parents, to whom the fate of the child depends. After all, on the type of personality, it depends on which profession it is better to choose in the future. In order not to be mistaken in its definition, it is necessary to get acquainted with the work of Carl Leonhard.

The scientist was not just a recognized expert in his field, but also a very good person. Everyone who knew him, noted his delicacy and modesty in communication, goodwill towards others. Until very late days, he wrote articles and accepted patients. Karl Leonhard died in 1988.