This classic text reproduces Emil Kraepelin’s inaugural lecture at the
University of Dorpat in 1887. It represents one of the most succinct
contemporary surveys of German psychiatric discourse in the 1880s. It also
outlines Kraepelin’s own research priorities in the early years of his
career, providing important historical background to the motives that drove him
to place such great emphasis on (and hope in) experimental psychology. Contrary
to our contemporary image of Kraepelin as a grand clinical nosologist, this text
shows that he was much more of a diagnostician and experimental psychologist
than historians have generally assumed. The document also reflects a wider
‘psychological turn’ in German psychiatry, away from
patho-anatomic study - a turn that has often been overlooked in the
historiographic literature.