Psychopathology January-February 1984 [antikvár]

Psychopathology 17: 1-2 (1984)EditorialIn 1897 two important psychiatrists of that time, Wernicke and Ziehen, founded a monthly journal, the 'Monatsschrift für Psy-chiatrie und Neurologie'. Later on Bonhoeffer and Klaesi were the editors for decades. The journal was then continued as 'Psychiatria et Neurologia' and since 1968 as 'Psychiatria Clinica'. (In 1983 its 16th volume is ap-pearing.) Since 1974, after the deplorable death of the two preeditors Petrilowitsch and Spoerri, we have been charged with the edition of the journal. It shall be continued from its 17th volume, 1984, as 'Psychopathology. International Journal of Descriptive Psychopathology, Phenomenology and Clinical Diagnostics'.Thus, the history of the journal has its roots in a period when German-speaking psychiatrists contributed to the concepts and knowledge in this discipline in a manner which is still important. May we remind only, with respect to earlier editors of the 'Monatsschrift', the contributions of Wernicke to psychiatric nosology which still are current in the notion of cycloid psychoses and Bonhoeffer''s concept of the etiologically unspecific types of exogenous psychoses, the acute exogenous reaction types. In the edito-rial of 1976 appearing when Bemer was charged with the editorship, we stressed descriptive psychopathology and nosography as a central topic of 'Psychiatria Clinica'.This seemed to be of particular impor-tance. Biological, psychological and socio-logical research had progressed considerably in developing methods of research and in contributing to our knowledge. But in inter-preting the findings, description and psycho-pathological conceptualization have been neglected very often. This led to rash and in-appropriate conclusions.In the meantime, interest in psychopatho-logical description and concepts has been growing quickly. The discussion about reli-ability and validity of descriptive findings stimulated this interest. Now the discussion about appropriate models for the realization of psychopathologic phenomena and their in-terpretation is the most important discussion in this fíeld. The multiplicity of view points and, with respect to different goals, equiva-lence of different view points, has to be borne in mind.It is our aim to create an international médium for the discussion of this multiplicity of psychopathological view points. There-