Theodor Ziehen

Who was Theodor Ziehen?

Georg Theodor Ziehen was a German neurologist and psychiatrist born in Frankfurt am Main. He was the son of noted author, Eduard Ziehen.

As a gymnasium student he studied the works of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer at Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt. Later he studied medicine in Würzburg and Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1885. While a medical student he studied the writings of David Hume, Spinoza, Plato and George Berkeley. Following graduation he worked as an assistant to Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum at the mental hospital in Görlitz, and in 1887 became an assistant to Otto Binswanger at the psychiatric clinic in Jena. At Jena one of his patients was philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Subsequently he was a professor of psychiatry in Utrecht, Halle and Berlin. In 1912 he moved with his family to a small villa in Wiesbaden, where he spent the next few years as a private scholar. From 1917 he worked as a professor of philosophy at the University of Halle, and in 1930 he retired to Wiesbaden, where he died on 29 December 1950.

Ziehen published nearly 450 works on psychology, neurology, anatomy, et al. He was author of a textbook titled Die Geisteskrankheiten des Kindesalters, a book that was one of the first systematic works on child psychiatry in Germany. He also penned Psychiatrie für Ärzte und Studirende, a textbook that was published in four editions between 1894 and 1911. In his writings, Ziehen is credited with introducing the terms "affective psychosis" and "psychopathic constitution".