[Psychiatry and psychoanalysis--Eugen Bleuler's "dementia praecox or group of schizophrenias" (1911)].

Unlike many psychiatrists around 1900, Eugen Bleuler had a friendly, even partly affirmative attitude towards psychoanalysis. In his famous book "Dementia Praecox or Group of Schizophrenias" (1911) he emphasized the influence of psychoanalysis on his theory about schizophrenia. In this article we describe Bleuler's fundamental thoughts on psychology and psychotherapy in order to look for a special disposition to accept psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis seemed to him to be one of the most promising attempts to develop a systematic psychotherapy founded on a scientific psychology. In particular, Freud's hypothesis about the wish-fulfilling character of dreams influenced Bleuler's understanding of delusion and other symptoms of schizophrenia.