Chapter 13

PSYCHIATRY: ITS HISTORY

    Aum had an extraordinarily high number of doctors and psychiatrists for its members. What was the true nature of their practice?

    The term psychiatry in the West was coined in 1808 by Johann Christian Reil. Prior to that, the term "psychic medicine" had been used. The term "psychiatry" literally means the doctor of the soul, coming from the Greek, "psych" meaning soul, and "iatros" meaning doctor. »6 In Japan, the term was translated into spiritual medicine section and has not been changed.

    In 1811 a professorship of "psychiatric therapy" was established in Leipzig, Germany. This was followed by a similar chair in Berlin.177

    By 1882, reports on psychiatric treatment methods, which were sadistic, had prominent German individuals protesting, such as parliamentarians, journalists and scientists. They published a sensational appeal against the treatments.178

    German legislator Julius Lenzmann attacked the psychiatric community in a speech on January 16, 189'7. In part he said, "Most, if not all of the doctors of the insane are extremely nervous individuals. I have knowledge of the trials where all of the participants were of the opinion that the only insane one was the doctor."179 However, psychiatry did not disappear.

    One of the most pronounced problems with psychiatry, had been its inability to recognize what the problem actually is with the mentally ill. For example, in 1850, psychiatrist C.T. Groddeck was awarded a doctorate for his dissertation entitled "The Democratic Disease - A New Form of Insanity." In Groddeck's view, every democratically inclined person was insane. In 1854 Groddeck's colleague, C.J. Wretholm, "discovered" the "Sermon Disease." Psychiatrist P.J.Mobius lectured shortly after on the "psychological feeble-mindedness of woman." It was psychiatrist Adolf Hoppe who added to his variety of mental disorders "political and reformatory insanity." This served as a useful tool to squash dissidents to the military and political opponents. There was even a "French mental illness" for those born in France as they were considered mentally ill. 180 With a mental program explaining that man was indeed an animal, Bismarck - the leader of Germany - was able to use this "science' as a suitable justification for war.

    However, psychiatry was not without its internal critics and there was a case in 1911 where a lawyer was representing those who had been institutionalized unjustly. The German psychiatrist August Forel wrote in a letter about the lawyer, "Psychiatric science demands empirically that such people are rendered powerless." Psychiatry soon deemed those who were their opponents as mentally ill, and created new disorders for

    In the last decade of last century, there was a psychologist named Wilhelm Wunt of Leipzig University. He theorized that man was an animal and that all thought was brought about from the result of chemical reactions in the brain. Today Wunt is still highly revered by his descendant peers.

    One of Wunt's students was Emil Kraepelin, who became known as the "Father of Psychiatry." He believed that mental symptoms were hereditary and he supported the sterilization of certain "mentally ill" so defective genes could not be passed on.

    Ernst Rudin was a student of Kraepelin, and he was a rabid eugenicist. His racial theories were the basis for selling Hitler on the workability of creating a pure Aryan race. He had been described as the "most evil man in Nazi Germany."

    Adolf Hitler was once interned in Pacewalk Psychiatric Hospital after the European war of 191418.isi Additionally, when Hitler was later interned in 1923 in Lansberg Prison, he studied psychiatric texts espousing theories of genocide and the works of eugenics.182 It was at this hospital where Hitler traced his calling, and it was after this time that Hitler's speeches became laced with his "hate and pain" rhetoric. Hitler was also administered psychiatric drugs such as methsamphetamines and eukadol (a drug similar to morphine and codeine) during the second world war by Dr. Theodore Morrell. 183 During the Nuremberg rally speeches he was given barbiturates to hype him into a lively manner. Later he was to use cocaine as well as other psychiatric drugs.

    On July 4, 1933, the Sterilization Act was enacted and became law in Germany. Within a decade doctors and nurses had been turned into mass murderers.

Psychiatry - Horror Imported to Japan

    Perhaps the very first psychiatric teachings in Japan were from the German, Dr. Erwin Baelz, who taught psychiatry as part of internal medicine at Tokyo University in 1879.

    The grandfather of Japanese psychiatry is Dr. Hajime Sakaki who went abroad to study psychiatry in Germany in 1882. He was the first psychiatrist in Japan in 1886. 185 He became professor of Tokyo Imperial University while he was followed by the next generation of graduates of who the most famous was Syuzo Kure.

    A great influence who spreading psychiatry in Japan this century was Koichi Miyake, born 1876, graduated from Tokyo Imperial University school of medicine in 1901, and became a member of the psychiatric section of the university the following year. In 1905 he went to Vienna and then Munich, to study under the psychiatrist Kraepeline. He returned to Japan in 1907 and became professor of psychiatry at the Tokyo Imperial University in 1925. 186

    A student of Kure's was Professor Dr. Mitsuzo Shimoda. He entered the medical department of Tokyo Imperial University in 1908. He graduated three years later. In 1923 he went abroad to study psychiatry in Germany and Austria. When he returned to Japan he was appointed as a professor of Kyushu University. By April 1927 he was using Sulfonol as a early form of deep sleep therapy.187

    Deep sleep therapy was first pioneered in Japan by Europeans O. Wolf who used triennial in a therapy he named "trionalcure". In 1922 J. Klasse was using deep sleep therapy under his treatment name of "Dauernarcose". One of Shimoda's students, Tatsuo Yomeyama also writes about its use in 1938. 188

    Shortly after Shimoda's return, psychiatrist Yushi Uchimura went to Germany in 1926 and studied at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute,189 which was to be renamed the Max Planck Institute. This institute was a medical unit, known as "T4", which decided the fate of Nazi victims and sent them to extermination camps. 190 He was one of those to bring

    back from the Nazis the theories of criminal biology (eugenics). He founded the Tokyo University Brain Research Institute where later notorious lobotomies were conducted. 191

    Dr. Shufu Yosimasu was born in 1899, and in 1956 he wrote about the study of eugenics, criminal biology, and the German psychiatrist Ernst Rudin, as well as the Max Plank Institute. 19z Later this institute was exposed as a leader in the "T4" Extermination Unit program during the Second World War in Germany.193

    Rudin was the psychiatrist who was to promote Eugenics through Germany which was used as the basis of the theories behind the Final Solution to exterminate millions of Jews, Gypsies and other minority groups. In essence, these theories gave Hitler the power to achieve what he wanted against humanity.

    In 1930 the Japanese Society of Racial Hygiene began. Then similar theories were promoted in Japan such as the Eugenics Act of 1940, where the law permitted people suffering mental illness to be sterilized so as to eradicate what was termed genetic mental illness.

    Yosimasu worked with an associate Dr. Hisomu Nagai who was a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University. Yosimasu writes highly of the Nazis in his own work. i94 Yosimasu later became professor of the Brain Institution at Tokyo University in 1959 and formed the Criminal Psychology class of the Medical Dental University in 1959 of which he was professor of from 1961 to 1965. 195

    Yosimasu died in 1974. However, he had many students. Japan's loss in the war did not prevent his work or theories in the field of Eugenics being promoted.

    In 1959 Shuo Kichimasu formed the Criminal Psychology Research Class in the Tokyo Medical dental University. He called in Osamu Nakata, a graduate of the Tokyo University Medical department in 1945, to be the Deputy Professor. Nakata wrote, "From around 1920 to the 1930s the Golden Age of Nazis criminal biology appeared in Germany and Austria. In this field psychiatrists played a big role splendidly." 196 Nakata was also a member of the Scientific Research Center for the Police. 197

    Another famous criminal psychiatrist is Nobuyoshi Takemura. He was a member of the group of Tokyo University psychiatrists from the Brain Institute, who were exposed in 1982 at Utsunomia hospital, where they had gathered to and cut up human brains. 198 Takemura was a assistant professor at the university. The brains had been gathered from those who died at the psychiatric hospitals.

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