Book Review: Psychogenic Psychoses
Abstract
August Wimmer. Psychogenic Psychoses. Edited, translated and with Introduction by Johan Schioldann; Forewords by German Berrios and Nils Retterstl. Burnside, South Australia: Adelaide Academic Press, 2003. Pp. 265. ISBN 0957858531. AU $50.00. August Wimmer's 1916 work on psychogenic psychoses, Psykogene Sindssyg- domsformer, has been widely acknowledged as a landmark study and as the starting point of Scandinavian psychiatry's preference for psychogenic psychoses. No paper on the conceptual history of psychogenic or reactive psychoses would be complete without considering Wimmer's monograph of 1916. However, in spite of its importance to world psychiatry, Psykogene Sindssygdomsformer had never, until recently, been translated from the Danish original into another language. Non-Danish speakers had to rely on a short introductory passage translated by Strmgren (1986). In 1993 another treatise by Wimmer, 'On possession states' (1924), appeared in translation as Classic Text No. 15 in this journal. While this text also set out some of Wimmer's views on psychogenic psychoses, his seminal monograph remained untranslated. The gap has now been filled. Johan Schioldann, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Adelaide, has undertaken the intricate work of translation. He has produced a complex but informative and rewarding volume containing the complete text of Wimmer's