title: The early eugenics movement and emerging professional psychiatry: conceptual transfers and personal relationships between Germany and North America, 1880s to 1930s.
abstract: French-Austrian psychiatrist Bénédict Augustin Morel's (1809-1873) Traits des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine (1857) was fully dedicated to the social problem of "degeneration" and it became very attractive to German-speaking psychiatrists during the latter half of the 19th century. Auguste Forel (1848-1931) and Constantin von Monakow (1853-1930) in Zurich integrated Morel's approach and searched for the somatic and morphological alterations in the human brain; a perspective of research that Ernst Ruedin (1874-1952) at Munich further prolonged into a thorough analysis of hereditary influences on mental health. This paper investigates the continuities and major differences within some early eugenic traditions of the emerging field of psychiatry in the German-speaking countries and North America.
authors.forename: Frank W
authors.initials: FW
authors.lastname: Stahnisch
mesh_terms: D005053:Eugenics / Q000266:history*; D005060:Europe; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009656:North America; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*