Accentuation of personality. Who first introduced this concept? This was done by Karl Leonhard, whose biography will be described in this article.
Milestones on a long journey
He was born in 1904 in Edelfeld, located in Bavaria. As a child, Karl Leonhard dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but gradually his main passion was medicine. After graduation, he chose psychiatry as the direction of his labor and scientific activity. The first place of his work in 1931 was the psychiatric clinic in Gabersee. A year later, Karl Leonhard, whose photo is presented in this article, becomes her head physician. However, in 1936 he left this post and transferred to the Frankfurt University Hospital of Nervous Diseases and soon received a degree. In 1944, he was already a freelance professor at this university. Then Karl Leonhard becomes a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Medical Academies in Erfurt and Berlin. In 1957, he began working at the Charite Clinic.
Favorite topics
Teaching at universities, Karl Leonhard does not abandon his private practice. In addition to her, he is engaged in scientific research, the results of which are essays and articles. He devotes the most attention to schizophrenia. In his works you can find a classification and clinic of this disease. Leongard is willingly accepted into national and international scientific communities, often he becomes their honorary member, despite the fact that some of his scientific studies do not find approval among other scientists. For example, his attempt to isolate cycloid psychosis into a separate disease. Whereas only depressive psychosis and schizophrenia were officially recognized. German psychiatrist Karl Leonhard also studied childhood schizophrenia. He believed that the symptoms of this disease appear already in childhood. In the same period of a person’s life, such a diagnosis can be made. Additionally, he described violations of the development of intelligence.
Wide interests
Leonongard also studied neurosis and behavioral therapy. He devoted a lot of time to the psychopathology of human behavior. The pathologies he noticed were described in the monographs “Instincts and ancient instincts of human sexuality”, as well as “Expressiveness of facial expressions, gestures and human voices”. Many of the writings of the psychiatrist were ahead of their time. For example, those related to involutional depression, classification of endogenous psychoses, schizophrenia, neurosis and accentuation of character and temperament. The latter was studied by him thoroughly. Based on the study of mood disorders, Leonhard wrote the scientific work "Accentuation of personality." In it, he broke accentuations by type and described them. Additionally gave a characterization of each type on the example of the characters of literary heroes.
Personality Accentuation
The monograph of Karl Leongard is divided into two parts. In the first of these, he conducts a psychological and clinical analysis of accented personalities. The second part consists of examples. Leonhard analyzed the characters of literary heroes born of the fantasy of more than 30 writers known throughout the world. These are the heroes of the works of Stendhal, Goethe, Balzac, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Cervantes and others. In our country, the book "Accentuated Persons" was published in 1981. It was found interesting not only by experts in the field of psychiatry, but also by ordinary readers, thanks to the author’s special presentation style. Also, the monograph has been translated into many languages. Among them are Romanian, Italian, English, Japanese and others.
Types of personality according to Leonhard
According to the psychiatrist, there are only 10 pure personality types and several intermediate ones. He divides them according to temperament, character and personality level. In his opinion, temperament is given to man by nature. There are several types of personality with temperament. Types related to the personal level: introvented and exterested. Types related to character: excitable (short temper, pedantry, submission to instincts); demonstrative (vanity, self-confidence, flattery), pedantic (conscientiousness, indecision, hypochondria); stuck (resentment, suspicion). He related to temperament: emotional (compassion, kindness), anxious (shyness, timidity), dysthymic (focus on failure, fear, retardation), effectively labile (compensation of traits, focus on standards), effectively exalted (emotionality, inspiration, elevated feelings). In addition, Leonhard gave his definitions of extrovert and introvert, different from those previously adopted. With his light hand, psychiatrists around the world began to use them. “Accentuated personalities” can be advised to read to teachers and parents, to those on whom the fate of the child depends. After all, the type of personality that determines which profession is best for him to choose in the future. In order not to be mistaken in its definition, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with the work of Karl Leongard.
The scientist was not only a recognized specialist in his field, but also a very good person. Everyone who was familiar with him, noted his delicacy and modesty in communication, goodwill towards others. Until the very last days, he wrote articles and received patients. Karl Leonhard died in 1988.