[Introduction of shock therapy and psychiatric emigration]

Abstract

The introduction and general acceptance of shock treatment was intimately connected with the emigration of psychiatrists from the German speaking countries in 1933-1938. In 1934 Manfred Sakel began in Vienna, possibly already in 1933 in Berlin, with insulin shock treatment, and later emigrated to the US. From 1936 Max Müller in Münsingen, Switzerland, practised and propagated the same treatment. Many psychiatric emigrants, on their way to their new countries, visited Münsingen to learn the methods and take them to their future countries of residence (e.g. Lucie Jessner, Gertrude May-Gross, Martin Gross, Ruth Wilmanns, Arthur Kronfeld, Justin Hans Adler and Jacob Peter Frostig). In 1934 Ladislas von Meduna, who emigrated to Chicago in 1939, using campher and Cardiazol also introduced the convulsion treatment. After Cerletti and Bini in Rome had changed the method of provoking convulsions by using electric current, other psychiatric emigrants (Lothar Kalinowsky, Fritz Kant, William Karlinger, Lilly Ottenheimer, Max Rinkel, among others) introduced this method to many countries. In addition, Wagner-Jauregg's best known collaborators for the well-introduced malaria therapy, also had to emigrate. Among these are Helene Deutsch, Josef Gerstmann, Bernhard Dattner and Martha Brünner-Ornstein. The review of life and work of the psychiatrists concerned, before and after emigration, has been complemented by unpublished material.