Emil Kraepelin (German: ['e:mi:l 'kRe:p@li:n]; 15 February 1856 - 7 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist. H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics. Kraepelin believed the chief origin of psychiatric disease to be biological and genetic malfunction. His theories dominated psychiatry at the start of the 20th century and, despite the later psychodynamic influence of Sigmund Freud and his disciples, enjoyed a revival at century's end.
Influence
Kraepelin's great contribution in classifying schizophrenia and manic depression remains relatively unknown to the general public, and his work, which had neither the literary quality nor paradigmatic power of Freud's, is little read outside scholarly circles. Kraepelin's contributions were also to a large extent marginalized throughout a good part of the 20th century during the success of Freudian etiological theories. However, his views now dominate many quarters of psychiatric research and academic psychiatry. His fundamental theories on the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders form the basis of the major diagnostic systems in use today, especially the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV and the World Health Organization's ICD system, based on the Research Diagnostic Criteria and earlier Feighner Criteria developed by espoused "neo-Kraepelinians", though Robert Spitzer and others in the DSM committees were keen not to include assumptions about causation as Kraepelin had.  Kraepelin has been described as a "scientific manager" and political operator, who developed a large-scale, clinically oriented, epidemiological research programme. In this role he took in clinical information from a wide range of sources and networks. Despite proclaiming high clinical standards for himself to gather information "by means of expert analysis of individual cases", he would also draw on the reported observations of officials not trained in psychiatry. The various editions of his textbooks do not contain detailed case histories of individuals, however, but mosaiclike compilations of typical statements and behaviors from patients with a specific diagnosis. In broader terms, he has been described as a bourgeois or reactionary citizen.  Kraepelin wrote in a knapp und klar (concise and clear) style that made his books useful tools for physicians. Abridged and clumsy English translations of the sixth and seventh editions of his textbook in 1902 and 1907 (respectively) by Allan Ross Diefendorf (1871-1943), an assistant physician at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane at Middletown, inadequately conveyed the literary quality of his writings that made them so valuable to practitioners.
What influenced Emil to get into psychiatry?
research and academic psychiatry.
research and academic psychiatry.