Abstract

PEREZ-RINCON GARCIA, Héctor. When Psychiatry neither liberates nor alleviates: The dramatic life of a psychiatrist-writer. Rev Neuropsiquiatr [online]. 2016, vol.79, n.4, pp.247-254. ISSN 0034-8597.  http://dx.doi.org/10.20453/rnp.v79i4.2979.

Within the numerous group of psychiatrist-writers across history, the life and work of Oskar Panizza (1853-1921) are examined. Born in Bavaria, a classmate of Kraepelin in medical school and, a disciple of von Gudden and a promising clinican/investigator, Panizza, however, pursued an intense literary vocation and wrote novels, essays and plays. He exhibited a bold temperament, a passionate and critical carácter that transferred to his Works and to a growing journalistic activity in which also emerged a clear paranoid ideation, hallucinatory experiences and violence directed against politial and religious authorities from Germany and Europe. He had acquired syphilis in his youth and, for such reason, diagnostic possibilities of a mental disorder related to it or to another psychotic condition are discussed. He died poor and abandoned in a Bayreauth hospital. His work has received delayed recognition as precursor of modern academic concepts on sexual anthropology and psycho-philosophical thinking.

Keywords : Literature and psychiatry; creativity; syphilis; psychosis.

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