Edda Neele (born 15 December 1910 in Elberfeld,

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and tow ...

, died 16 February 2005) was a German psychiatrist, and a student and collaborator of Karl Kleist, who worked at the Goethe University Frankfurt Neuropsychiatric Clinic. Along with

Karl Leonhard Karl Leonhard (21 March 1904 – 23 April 1988) was a German psychiatrist who was a student and collaborator of Karl Kleist, who himself stood in the tradition of Carl Wernicke. With Kleist, he created a complex classification of psychotic illnesse ...

, she was among Kleist's most prolific disciples and contributed significantly to popularizing the terms unipolar (‘einpolig’) and bipolar (‘zweipolig’) that are now used in the concepts of

unipolar depression Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...

and

bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...

, and which had been coined by Kleist. Her 1949 Habilitation dissertation, a study of "cyclical psychoses" admitted to the Frankfurt University Neuropsychiatric Clinic between 1938 and 1942, was the first written publication which used the terms "unipolar disorder" and "bipolar disorder." She was the first woman to write a Habilitation in psychiatry in Germany. She later had a private practice as a psychiatrist in Frankfurt until she retired in 1986, aged 76. During the national socialist era, she was, influenced by the theologian Karl Barth, a member of the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (german: link=no, Bekennende Kirche, ) was a movement within German Protestantism during Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German ...

, which actively opposed national socialism. She later became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and served as Vice President of the CDU women's movement in

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are Dar ...

in the 1960s. She was a personal friend of health minister

Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt (7 January 1901 – 30 October 1986) was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She was Federal Minister of Health in the German Cabinet from 1961 to 1966, the first woman to hold a Ministerial po ...

, Germany's first female member of the federal government. She was a CDU candidate in Hesse in the 1965 West German federal election.Die Volksvertretung 1946–1972
/ref> The Edda Neele Foundation, founded in 1995, is named in her honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neele, Edda German psychiatrists Academic staff of Goethe University Frankfurt Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians 1910 births 2005 deaths Scientists from Frankfurt German women psychiatrists