Karl Wilhelm Ideler (1795-1860) was born in Bentwisch, Margraviate of Brandenburg, as the son of a pastor. After his father's untimely death, he grew up in Berlin with one of his uncles, a well-renowned professor of mathematics (Benzenhöfer 1993: 132). He entered medical school in Berlin in 1811 and earned his doctorate in 1820 with a dissertation titled De principio nervorum activo imponderabili. He spent the following years as a general practitioner in the cities of Bernau, Rathenow and Genthin before becoming the head of the department for the mentally ill at Charité Berlin in 1828 (Schipperges 1962: 10). Ideler gained the formal qualification for professorship (habilitation) in 1831 and was appointed an associate professor at Berlin University in 1839. In 1840, he became a full professor and director of the newly established psychiatric university clinic, a post that he held until his death in 1860 (cf. Haack & Kumbier 2004).
Ideler conceptualised "madness" as both a result and an extreme form of passion. Having outlined this idea already in his first book, Anthropologie für Arzte (Anthropology for Physicians; 1827), he systematically developed the concept in his main work, Grundriss der Seelenstörungen (Outline of Soul Treatment; 2 vols., 1835 and 1838). Studying the biographies of mentally disturbed individuals (1841), he tried to understand the patients' moral development and, even more important, their biographies in order to analyse and classify the pathogenic effects of excessive and exaggerated emotions. He clearly distinguished between "idiopathic forms of madness" – madness in the proper sense – with purely psychological causes (e.g., childhood experiences, lifestyle) and "sympathetic forms" with primarily physical causes that do not require any psychiatric treatment as such (cf. Benzendörfer 1993: 175).
Like other anthropologically oriented psychiatrists of his time, Ideler conceptualised human beings as having a body and a soul: even though the earthly presence relies on both body and soul, the immortal soul is independent from and superior to the body. Based on this concept of a "double existence", the treatment of the mad and insane should be guided by strict moral and pedagogical principles. According to Ideler, the patients resembled immature children: "Just like naughty children, the insane are well aware of their defects but unable to correct them through their own efforts (1832: 435; our translation). This attitude reflects the Christian-bourgeois concept of a virtuous, decent and modest lifestyle. The treatment was paternalistic and the patients were expected to be obedient: bridling their "excessive passions" would allow reason to regain a sense of public spirit and the right bourgeois values.
Following Johann Baptist Friedreich's (1796-1862) famous 1836 distinction between "psychic" and "somatic" approaches to psychiatry, Ideler was long regarded as a typical "psychicist", who stood in contrast to the science-oriented "somaticists" (e.g., C. W. M. Jacobi, W. Griesinger). Today we know that this distinction, albeit widely accepted until far into the 20th century, was too narrow and did not acknowledge the fact that particularly the methods of treatment were quite similar (Kutzer 2003). Ideler is now seen as one of the main proponents of an anthropological and person-centered orientation in early German psychiatry during the first half of the 19th century (Haack & Kumbier 2006).
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