Theodor Ziehen

Georg Theodor Ziehen (12 November 1862 - 29 December 1950) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Frankfurt am Main. He was the son of noted author, Eduard Ziehen (1819-1884).

As a gymnasium student he studied the works of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer at Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt. Later he studied medicine in Würzburg and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1885. While a medical student he studied the writings of David Hume, Spinoza, Plato and George Berkeley. Following graduation he worked as an assistant to Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum at the mental hospital in Görlitz, and in 1887 became an assistant to Otto Binswanger at the Psychiatric Clinic in Jena. At Jena one of his patients was philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Subsequently he was a professor of psychiatry in Utrecht (from 1900), Halle (from 1903) and Berlin (1904-1912). In 1912 he moved with his family to a small villa in Wiesbaden, where he spent the next few years as a private scholar. From 1917 he worked as a professor of philosophy at the University of Halle, and in 1930 he retired to Wiesbaden, where he died on 29 December 1950.

Ziehen published nearly 450 works on psychology, neurology, anatomy, et al. He was author of an important textbook Die Geisteskrankheiten des Kindesalters (Mental Diseases of Childhood), which was one of the first systematic works concerning child psychiatry in Germany. He also penned the textbook Psychiatrie für Ärzte und Studirende which was published in four editions between 1894 and 1911. In his writings, Ziehen is credited with introducing the terms "affective psychosis" and "psychopathic constitution".[1] Along with neurologist Hermann Oppenheim, the Ziehen-Oppenheim syndrome is named, which is a genetic torsion dystonia (spasms) due to a lesion of the basal ganglia.[2]

In 1898 he published Psychophysiologische Erkenntnistheorie (Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge), with psychology being the basis of his philosophic belief system. He was a practitioner of associative psychology, and from a philosophic standpoint advocated monistic positivism, or what he called the "principle of immanence".

Selected works

References

  1. ^ BioMed Experts Theodor Ziehen as child and adolescent psychiatrist
  2. ^ [1] Ziehen-Oppenheim syndrome @ Who Named It