Klinische 'Erfahrung' als Evidenzkriterium? Psychiatrische Beiträge zu einer Nachkriegsdebatte um eine 'Reform der Medizin' und die Entwicklung der 'verstehenden Anthropologie' Jürg Zutts

At the Wiesbaden Internist Congress of 1949, Alexander Mitscherlich and Viktor von Weizsacker called for an expansion of the scientific concept of causality to include the search for the meaning of illness in one's personal history. This called into question a traditional psychiatric paradigm which presumed somatic causes of mental illness. Additionally, common psychiatric evidence practices were put to the test. In the first part of this article, three psychiatric positions that were presented at the 1949 congress are reconstructed. In the second part, the development of one of the psychiatrists involved, Jurg Zutt, is examined by focusing on the question of the possible effects of the Wiesbaden debate on his scientific reorientation as well as its consequences for his view of psychiatric evidence.