["How this conflict tortures me!" The man Emil Kraepelin as viewed in his poems].
In 1928, Emil Kraepelin's poems were published posthumously. They provide thus far unknown insight into his intellectual and emotional world. Here we meet the man Kraepelin rather than the psychiatrist. We feel the rather pensive mood he expresses using the same allegories from the world of nature again and again. Kraepelin suffers from the fate of his mother country and his profession as a doctor, which puts him in "slave chains," thus preventing him from following his own course and fulfilling his longings. Those can be seen in his wish to dedicate himself fully to his nosological, psychopathological, or experimental psychological research. One wonders why he did not push his aims through more forcefully in these areas. Procrastination became Kraepelin's self-deception, since he could enter those worlds periodically only. In this way, they resemble his journeys to the south, which became a metaphor for freedom.
Steinberg
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Archiv für Leipziger Psychiatriegeschichte, Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie, Universität Leipzig, Johannisallee 20, 04317 Leipzig. steinbh@medizin.uni-leipzig.de
D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D011037:Poetry as Topic / Q000266:history*; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*