Karl Leonhard

Karl Leonhard (21 March 1904 – 23 April 1988) was a German psychiatrist who was a student and collaborator of Karl Kleist, who himself stood in the tradition of Carl Wernicke. With Kleist, he created a complex classification of psychotic illnesses called Nosology. His work covered psychology, psychotherapy, biological psychiatry and biological psychology. Moreover, he created a classification of nonverbal communication.
Life
He was born at Edelsfeld in Bavaria as the sixth of eleven children, his father being a Protestant minister. His medical education (at Erlangen, Berlin and Munich) was completed in 1928 and he worked as a physician at psychiatric hospitals in Erlangen, then a year later Gabersee and from 1936 Frankfurt am Main, to which last he was called by Karl Kleist. During the period of the Third Reich in order to save his patients from being killed by means of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, he stopped making diagnoses that would endanger a patient.
He became a professor at Frankfurt in 1944 and a professor at Erfurt in the Soviet zone of Germany in 1954. In 1957 he became director of the psychiatric department at the Charité Hospital linked to the Humboldt University in East Berlin. He wanted to move back to West Germany in the 1960s, but was refused permission by the East German authorities. As compensation he got increased support for his scientific work. During his lifetime he interviewed more than 2000 psychotic patients, latterly with Dr Sieglinde von Trostorff. He died in East Berlin in 1988.
According to Helmut Beckmann (see "Books" below), editors of Western journals rejected his papers because "they were not in conformity with the standard practice of Anglo-American psychiatry and also because he pursued without compromise his own path derived from his findings." Most of his work was not translated into English. However summaries of Leonhard's views were included by Frank Fish in his "Schizophrenia" of 1962 (2nd edition 1976 ) and "Clinical Psychopathology" of 1967 (2nd edition 1985 ) which were widely read, if not understood, in their day.
Today diagnosis for psychotic patients and mentally or otherwise ill persons are most commonly placed by ICD or DSM criteria.
Psychosis will in general appear as an affective disorder (e.g. psychotic depression), a psychotic disorder (e.g. catatonic type of schizophrenia) or a mixture of both types, as evident in the schizoaffective disorder.
The Classification of Psychosis by Leonhard
Leonhard is well known for his classification of psychosis, based on the teamwork involving himself, his mentor Karl Kleist and fellow Kleist student Edda Neele. The classification is sometimes referred to as the Kleist-Leonhard classification system.
Clinical Pictures of Phasic Psychoses (without Cycloid Psychoses)
Manic-Depressive Illness
Pure Melancholia and Pure Mania
Pure Melancholia
Pure Mania
Pure Depressions and Pure Euphorias
Pure Depressions
Agitated Depression
Hypochondriacal Depression
Self-Tortured Depression
Suspicious Depression
Apathetic Depression
Pure Euphorias
Unproductive Euphoria
Hypochondriacal Euphoria
Exalted Euphoria
Confabulatory Euphoria
Indifferent Euphoria
The Cycloid Psychosis
Anxiety-Happiness Psychosis
Excited-Inhibited Confusion Psychosis
Hyperkinetic-Akinetic Motility Psychosis
The Unsystematic Schizophrenias
Affective Paraphrenia
Cataphasia (Schizophasia)
Periodic Catatonia
The Systematic Schizophrenias
Simple Systematic Schizophrenias
Catatonic Forms
Parakinetic Catatonia
Manneristic Catatonia
Proskinetic Catatonia
Negativistic Catatonia
Speech-Prompt Catatonia
Sluggish Catatonia
Hebephrenic Forms
Foolish Hebephrenia
Eccentric Hebephrenia
Shallow Hebephrenia
Autistic Hebephrenia
Paranoid Forms
Hypochondrical Paraphrenia
Phonemic Paraphrenia
Incoherrent Paraphrenia
Fantastic Paraphrenia
Confabulatory Paraphrenia
Expansive Paraphrenia
Combined Systematic Schizophrenias
Combined Systematic Catatonias
Combined Systematic Hebephrenias
Combined Systematic Paraphrenias
Early Childhood Schizophrenias
Books
Die defektschizophrenen Krankheitsbilder, Leipzig: Thieme 1936
Classification of Endogenous Psychoses and their Differentiated Etiology, 2nd edition edited by Helmut Beckmann. New York/Wien: Springer-Verlag 1999
Der menschliche Ausdruck in Mimik, Gestik und Phonik, Leipzig: Barth 1969 - 3 Aufl. Wuerzburg 1997.
Notes
References
Internationale Wernicke-Kleist-Leonhard Gesellschaft
Menschenkunde.de
PsychiatrieOnline.org
Julian Schwarz: Biography of Karl Leonhard in: Biographical Archive of Psychiatry (BIAPSY).
German psychiatrists
1904 births
1988 deaths
Bipolar disorder researchers
20th-century German physicians
Scientists from Frankfurt
Physicians of the Charité