Kurt Schneider

Kurt Schneider (7 January 1887 – 27 October 1967) was a German psychiatrist known largely for his writing on the diagnosis and understanding of schizophrenia, as well as personality disorders then known as psychopathic personalities.

Schneider was born in Crailsheim, Kingdom of Württemberg in 1887. He began his psychiatric training in Cologne; however, his training was interrupted by the first World War, in which he served on the Western Front. When his post-war career began, Schneider was influenced and mentored by Max Scheler, a philosophy professor and one of the co-founders of the phenomenological movement in philosophy. Scheler served as Schneider’s supervisor for his postgraduate degree in philosophy in 1921.  Schneider applied Scheler’s theory of emotions to his studies and this theory was the topic of his first major publications.

In 1931 he became director of the German Psychiatric Research Institute in Munich, which was founded by Emil Kraepelin. Disgusted by the developing tide of psychiatric eugenics championed by the Nazi Party, Schneider left the institute, but did serve as a doctor for the German armed forces during World War II.

After the war, academics who had not taken part in the Nazi eugenics policies were appointed to serve in, and rebuild Germany's medical institutions. Schneider was appointed Dean of the Medical School at Heidelberg University and remained there until his retirement in 1955.

Schneider and Karl Jaspers founded the Heidelberg school of psychiatry.

Schneider also wrote and published many books and articles; his first book on psychopathic personalities in 1923 ran to nine editions and discussed the psychological differences between two sorts of depressive conditions – melancholic and reactive. Schneider’s publication, “First Rank Symptoms,” remains one of his most notable contributions to the field of psychiatry and outlined the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia. Even though he published “First Rank Symptoms” in 1939, the work remained unnoticed until much later, primarily due to the Second World War. His paper, The Stratification of Emotional Life and the Structure of Depressive States, was noted as one of the first applications of phenomenological philosophy to psychiatry. His most historically significant publication, "Clinical Psychopathology" was originally published in 1946, but it was later titled "Beiträge zur Psychiatrie". In its third edition, it was titled "Klinische Psychopathologie", before its final edition, which was translated into English as "Clinical Psychopathology".

Schneider was concerned with improving the method of diagnosis in psychiatry. He contributed to diagnostic procedures and the definition of disorders in the following areas of psychiatry:

Schneider coined the terms endogenous depression, derived from Emil Kraepelin's use of the adjective to mean biological in origin, and reactive depression, more usually seen in outpatients, in 1920.