Karl Birnbaum (August 20, 1878 in Schweidnitz/ Świdnica – March 31, 1950 in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

) was a German-American

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and

neurologist Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal c ...

Career

In 1902 he received his doctorate from the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemb ...

, and subsequently working at the Herzberge asylum in Berlin-Lichtenberg. In 1923 he began work as an assistant to

Karl Bonhoeffer Karl Bonhoeffer (; March 31, 1868 – December 4, 1948) was a German neurologist, psychiatrist and physician. Life Bonhoeffer was born in Neresheim in the Kingdom of Württemberg to Friedrich von Bonhoeffer (1828–1907), who worked as judg ...

(1868-1948) at the

Charité The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine) is one of Europe's largest university hospitals, affiliated with Humboldt University and Free University Berlin. With numerous Collaborative Research C ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

. In 1927 he became an associate professor. An early interest in criminal psychology reportedly developed while in charge of high-secure wards for criminal and dangerous patients between 1908 and 1919. In 1930 he was appointed medical director of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt in Berlin, but because of his Jewish heritage was dismissed from his position after the Nazi takeover of Germany. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as a lecturer at the

New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. From 1940 he also worked at the municipal medical department of

. Birnbaum's primary research was in the fields of

clinical psychiatry Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal ...

, criminal psychology (

forensic psychiatry Forensic psychiatry is a subspeciality of psychiatry and is related to criminology. It encompasses the interface between law and psychiatry. According to the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it is defined as "a subspecialty of psychiat ...

psychopathy Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have bee ...

and

psychopathology Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era. Biological psychopathol ...

Theories

Psychopathy

Birnbaum was an influential writer on

, then having a very broad usage perhaps more equivalent to the category of

personality disorders Personality disorders (PD) are a class of mental disorders characterized by enduring maladaptive patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, exhibited across many contexts and deviating from those accepted by the individual's cultur ...

today, especially in regard to

criminology Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and s ...

. Millon, Simonsen and Birket-Smith have stated that "K. Birnbaum (1909), writing in Germany at the time of Kraepelin's later editions, was the first to suggest that the term "sociopathic" might be the most apt designation for the majority of these cases." The term

sociopathy Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have been ...

would later gradually become popular in America, especially as expounded by psychologist

George E. Partridge George Everett Partridge (31 May 1870, Worcester, Massachusetts – November 1953, Baltimore) was an American psychologist credited with popularizing the term sociopath in 1930 that Karl Brinbaum had suggested in 1909. He worked with the influenti ...

(1930) and adopted into early versions of the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langu ...

and is still referred to as an alternative term for

antisocial personality disorder Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD or infrequently APD) is a personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of disregard of, or violation of, the rights of others as well as a difficulty sustaining long-term relationships. Lack ...

. Birnbaum proposed several subtypes of sociopathy and argued that while there may be varying degrees of 'constitutional' disposition towards disorders that could lead to maladjustment and crime, it was the effect of social forces and environments which shaped the eventual outcome.

Richard Wetzell Richard Friedrich Wetzell (born 5 August 1961) is an American historian specializing in German criminology and research fellow at the German Historical Institute. He graduated from Swarthmore College and specialized in European history at Columb ...

(2000
''Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945''
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Birnbaum published in 1914 a large encyclopedic volume on criminal psychopaths, a second and revised edition of which would be released in 1926. Reviewers at the time noted different themes—a view of constitutional psychopathy as a form of degeneration with both inherited (genetic 'taint') and prenatally acquired (through injury to '

germ plasm Germ plasm () is a biological concept developed in the 19th century by the German biologist August Weismann. It states that heritable information is transmitted only by germ cells in the gonads (ovaries and testes), not by somatic cells. The ...

') types, resulting in a disposition towards mental disorder or a reduced capacity to resist anti-social tendencies; rejection of the term 'inferiors' for this category; a view that emotion is central to the disorder rather than necessarily deficient intellect; description of nearly 20 subtypes of psychopathic personalities (more akin to personality disorders than psychopathy as often defined today); a pivotal role for life events and social conditions in shaping whether someone with various psychopathic dispositions would end up engaging in antisocial or criminal behavior or not, and an insistence that even lifelong criminality does not necessarily mean underlying psychopathy. Birnbaum suggested that some forms of psychopathy involving moral or emotional immaturity or instability could be overcome by social-educative methods or spiritual leadership. In 1930 in an article 'The Social Significance of the Psychopathic', Birnbaum defined psychopaths as anyone who shows 'in a moderate degree dispositionally conditioned, 'constitutional', psychic deviations, and especially...in the sphere of character'. He stated this sufficiently distinguished psychopaths from the 'really insane', though not necessarily from the 'normal'. By 1949, now in America, Birnbaum writes in regard to pathological

Juvenile delinquency Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a perso ...

about the importance of considering both an immaturity of the personality from within, and environmental influences from without, and the complex interactions and pathways to conditions that result.

Pathogenesis and Pathoplasticity

Birnbaum in 1923 also coined a distinction between

pathogenic In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a ger ...

and ''pathoplastic'' factors, in his work "Der Aufbau der Psychose. Grundzüge der psychiatrischen Strukturanalyse". The term pathogenic was used to refer to what causes the essential structure of a

pathology Pathology is the study of the causes and effects of disease or injury. The word ''pathology'' also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in ...

, and pathoplastic to what causes the variation in the disorder between individuals or cultures. The terms are still sometimes used today in explanations for psychiatric conditions, though the concept of plasticity also has separate widespread uses as in

neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it p ...

Activity-dependent plasticity Activity-dependent plasticity is a form of functional and structural neuroplasticity that arises from the use of cognitive functions and personal experience; hence, it is the biological basis for learning and the formation of new memories. Activity- ...

, and

phenotypic plasticity Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompa ...

). It has recently been pointed out that the distinction has generally been used to report

Culture-bound syndrome In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome, or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or cu ...

s in non-Western countries, despite

western culture Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''. image:Plato Pio-Cle ...

also causing its own unique forms of disorders. Moreover, cultural factors could be pathogenic as well as pathoplastic, for example by influencing

epigenetic In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are ...

and associated

neuronal A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa. No ...

processes.Epigenetics and its implications for Psychology
Héctor González-Pardo and Marino Pérez Álvarez, Universidad de Oviedo. Psicothema, 2013, Vol. 25, No. 1, 3-12 doi: 10.7334/psicothema2012.327

Literary works

* (1902) ''Versuch eines Schemas für Intelligenzhandlungen''. Freiburg i.B.: Epstein (Med. Diss. v. 1902). * (1902
Versuch eines Schemas für Intelligenzhandlungen
''Pädagogisch-psychologische Studien'', 3: 57-62. * (1908) ''Psychosen mit Wahnbildung und wahnhafte Einbildungen bei Degenerativen''. Halle a.S.: Marhold. * (1909) ''Über psychopathische Persönlichkeiten. Eine psychopathologische Studie''. Wiesbaden: Bergmann. * (1911) ''Die krankhafte Willenschwäche und ihre Erscheinungsformen. Eine psychopathologische Studie für Ärzte, Pädagogen und gebildete Laien''. Wiesbaden: Bergmann. * (1914) ''Die psychopathischen Verbrecher. Die Grenzzustände zwischen geistiger Gesundheit und Krankheit in ihren Beziehungen zu Verbrechen und Strafwesen''. Leipzig: Thieme. * (1918) ''Psychische Verursachung seelischer Störungen und die psychisch bedingten abnormen Seelenvorgänge''. Wiesbaden: Bergmann. * (1919) Der Aufbau der Psychose. ''Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie'', 75: 455-502. * (1920) ''Psychopathologische Dokumente. Selbstbekenntnisse und Fremdzeugnisse aus dem seelischen Grenzlande. Berlin: Springer. * (1920) Die Strukturanalyse als klinisches Forschungsprinzip. ''Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie'', 53: 121-129. * (1921) ''Kriminalpsychopathologie. Systematische Darstellung''. Berlin: Springer. * (1923) ''Der Aufbau der Psychose. Grundzüge der psychiatrischen Strukturanalyse''. Berlin: Springer. * (1924) ''Grundzüge der Kulturpsychopathologie''. München: Bergmann. * (1927) ''Die psychischen Heilmethoden. Für ärztliches Studium und Praxis''. Leipzig: Thieme. * (1928) Geschichte der psychiatrischen Wissenschaft. In O. Bumke (Hrsg.), ''Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten'' (Erster Band, Erster Teil). Berlin: Springer, 11-49. * (1930) * (1930) (Hrsg.) ''Handwörterbuch der medizinischen Psychologie''. Leipzig: Thieme. * (1931) ''Kriminalpsychopathologie und psychobiologische Verbrecherkunde''. Berlin: Springer. * (1933) ''Soziologie der Neurosen''. Berlin: Springer. * (1935) ''Die Welt des Geisteskranken''. Berlin: Springer.

References

External links

at www.kfunigraz.ac.at
Peoples.ru: Карл Бирнбаум / Karl Birnbaum
at www.peoples.ru (Russian) * Julian Schwarz
Biography of Karl Birnbaum
in
Biographical Archive of Psychiatry (BIAPSY)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Birnbaum, Karl German neurologists German psychiatrists American neurologists American psychiatrists German emigrants to the United States People from Świdnica People from the Province of Silesia 1878 births 1950 deaths