title: The fight for 'traumatic neurosis', 1889-1916: Hermann Oppenheim and his opponents in Berlin.
abstract: The concept of traumatic neurosis conceived by Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919) located post-traumatic nervous symptoms between hysteria and neurasthenia, considering them a consequence of physical reactions to fright and a cause of molecular tissue changes. As early as 1890, his concept was criticized at an international congress in Berlin. In February 1916, there was a significant debate of the issue in Berlin, and eventually Oppenheim's concept was completely defeated at the war meeting of German neuropsychiatrists in September 1916 in Munich. In the Berlin debate, a range of views on war neurosis was presented. Partly as a result of this, but also due to the powerful position of Oppenheim himself, it was not until after the end of WWI that traumatic neurosis was excluded from medico-legal assessments. The differing views of physiological brain-mind relations from that time do not differ greatly from present concepts. However, Oppenheim's traumatic neurosis with its more quasi-neurological picture should not be equated with PTSD.
authors.affiliation: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Nervenheilkunde, Germany. bernd.holdorff@gmx.de
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Holdorff
mesh_terms: D001604:Berlin; D003130:Combat Disorders / Q000266:history*; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007046:Hysteria / Q000266:history*; D019222:Mind-Body Relations, Metaphysical; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000266:history*