The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939), noted primarily for his work on schizophrenia, was a renowned dissenter from the orthodox Freudian psychoanalytic approach to psychopathology.

Eugen Bleuler was born in Zurich on April 30, 1857. After taking his medical degree at the University of Zurich, he spent his professional life as director of the Burghölzi hospital, a neurological clinic near Zurich, and as professor of psychiatry at the University of Zurich. Bleuler's approach to mental illness included an appreciation of the importance of motivational factors in abnormal behavior, as well as an understanding that some of these motivational factors may be "unconscious," that is, not recognized by the patient himself. Consequently, he was attracted to certain aspects of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory. Bleuler began an early correspondence with Freud, and he appointed as his chief assistant at the Burghölzi one of Freud's followers, Carl Jung. Also...