When Reil Left Kant to Read Schelling: the Birth of Psychiatry

Abstract

This paper shows the contribution of German philosophy to the birth of psychiatry at the beginning of the 19th century. The physician and father of the term psychiatry (Psychiatrie), Johann Christian Reil, will evolve in his thinking. This evolution is due to the transition from a first stage, as a chemical reductionist, to a second stage, close to the philosophy of nature. The transition in his thinking occurs with Reil's change of philosophical orientation: from Kantian critical philosophy to Schelling's philosophy, with the consequence that Reil proposes psychiatry as a discipline.