Theodor Ziehen

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Georg Theodor Ziehen (November 12, 1862 - 1950) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist. He studied medicine in Würzburg and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1865. Afterwards, he was an assistant to Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum at his private practice in Görlitz, and in 1887 an assistant to Otto Binswanger at the Psychiatric Clinic in Jena. Later, he was a professor of psychiatry in Utrecht (1900), Halle (1903} and Berlin (1904-1912). Beginning in 1917 he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Halle.

Ziehen published nearly 450 works on psychology, neurology, anatomy, et al. He was author of an important textbook Die Geisteskrankheiten des Kindesalters (Mental Diseases of Childhood), which was the first systematic work concerning child psychiatry in Germany. He also penned the textbook Psychiatrie which was published in four editions between 1894 and 1911. In his writings, Ziehen was the first to coin and describe the terms "affective psychosis" and "psychopathic constitution". Along with neurologist Hermann Oppenheim, the Ziehen-Oppenheim syndrome is named, which is a genetic torsion dystonia (spasms) due to a lesion of the basal ganglia.

In 1898 he published Psychophysiologische Erkenntnistheorie (Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge), with psychology being the basis of his philosophic belief system. Ziehen was a practitioner of associative psychology, and from a philosophic standpoint advocated monistic positivism, or what he called the "principle of immanence". However, at the same time he opposed the philosophy of materialism.

Reference:

• American Journal of Psychiatry

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