Joseph Guislain
Encyclopedia
Joseph Guislain was a Belgian
physician and a pioneer in psychiatry
.
which was highly influential in German psychiatry from the mid-nineteenth century. In his three-volume work Leçons orales sur les phrénopathies of 1852 he further expanded his vision on mental illness.
In 1835, he was appointed as professor in physiology at the University of Ghent. In 1848, he became member of the governing board of the new moderate Liberal Association, put himself up as a candidate for the municipality Council elections and was elected. Three years later he was re-elected for a second period of three years, but in 1854 he made an end to his political career.
In 1852, the municipality Council of Ghent accepted his plans for a new psychiatric hospital and in 1857 the Guislain Institute was inaugurated. After he died on 1 April 1860 in Ghent he was interred at the Campo Sancto in Sint Amandsberg
. In 1887, a statue for him was inaugurated at the Begijnhoflaan in Ghent.
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
physician and a pioneer in psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
.
Education
Guislain started his medical studies at Ecole de Médicine and he was one of the first students to the University of Ghent; he graduated as a medical doctor in 1819.Career
In 1828 Guislain became head of the psychiatric hospitals of Ghent, for which he wrote a new internal regulation together with Petrus Josef Triest. It was the first of its type and stipulated how to handle the patients in a decent and therapeutically justified way. In 1850, together with Edouard Ducpétiaux, he was at the basis of the law on psychiatric care, which would remain the framework for psychiatric care in Belgium until 1991. Joseph Guislain published his Traité sur les phrénopathies in 1833, in which he proposed a new form of psychiatric classification. He argued that although mental illnesses could take many forms they were all derived from the same single disease process. This gave rise to the psychiatric doctrine of unitary psychosisUnitary psychosis
Unitary psychosis refers to the 19th-century belief prevalent in German psychiatry until the era of Emil Kraepelin that all forms of psychosis were surface variations of a single underlying disease process...
which was highly influential in German psychiatry from the mid-nineteenth century. In his three-volume work Leçons orales sur les phrénopathies of 1852 he further expanded his vision on mental illness.
In 1835, he was appointed as professor in physiology at the University of Ghent. In 1848, he became member of the governing board of the new moderate Liberal Association, put himself up as a candidate for the municipality Council elections and was elected. Three years later he was re-elected for a second period of three years, but in 1854 he made an end to his political career.
In 1852, the municipality Council of Ghent accepted his plans for a new psychiatric hospital and in 1857 the Guislain Institute was inaugurated. After he died on 1 April 1860 in Ghent he was interred at the Campo Sancto in Sint Amandsberg
Ghent
Ghent is a city and a municipality located in the Flemish region of Belgium. It is the capital and biggest city of the East Flanders province. The city started as a settlement at the confluence of the Rivers Scheldt and Lys and in the Middle Ages became one of the largest and richest cities of...
. In 1887, a statue for him was inaugurated at the Begijnhoflaan in Ghent.
Sources
- Joseph Guislain (Liberal Archive)