Karl!Leonhard (1904-1988) -: psychiatrist and neurologist at the Charite in Berlin

Karl Leonhard belongs to the lost representatives of the neuropsychiatry which was dominated by psychiatry and neurology in clinic and science. Coming from Frankfurt/Main, he went in 1955 until 1957 to Erfurt. Afterwards he was professor and director of the psychiatric and neurologic clinic at the Humboldt-University Charite in Berlin until his retirement in 1970. In 1962 he hod been offered a chair at the University at Frankfurt/Main and this led to personal and political irritations. He continued his scientific work at the Charite in Berlin until his death in 1988. Following the tradition of Carl Wernicke and Karl Kleist, Leonhard developed with his differentiated analysis of psychopathologic phenomena as well as a differentiated nosologic classification of endogenous psychoses. He worked out new criteria of endogenous psychoses in clinic, therapy and research by describing cycloid psychoses, which are in process and prognosis, different from unsystematic and systematic schizophrenias and he described the nosologic forms of uni- and bipolar depressions. His ideas of the particular position of biological components in human behaviour were criticized after ideological points of view. But they led to a better understanding and knowledge of the human psycho. Leonhards concept of attenuated personalities and his description of normal and abnormal personalities was the basic of his individual therapy of neurosis. He always was concerned in his patients' special individuality. His influence on neurology and neuropsychology together with his ideas of theory and practice of brain localization and especially the description of aphasic and agraphic forms are still relevant.