Karl Kleist

Karl Kleist (born 31 January 1879 in Mulhouse, Alsace, died 26 December 1960) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who made notable advances in descriptive psychopathology and neuropsychology.^[1][2][3] Kleist coined the terms unipolar (‘einpolig’) and bipolar (‘zweipolig’) that are now used in the concepts of unipolar depression and bipolar disorder.^[4] His main publications were in the field of neurology, and he is particularly known for his work on the localisation of function in the cerebral cortex of man including mapping of cortical functions on brain maps. The work is based on several hundred cases of shot wounded patients of World War I, whose functional deficits Kleist deliberately studied and described in detail during their lifetime. Later on, by means of brain autopsy, he documented the lesion and was, thus, able to localize brain function in each single case doing this also on cytoarchitectonical grounds.^[5][6] Kleist was a student of Carl Wernicke and his work was closely associated with the Wernicke tradition. Among his students were Edda Neele and Karl Leonhard, who further developed the Kleist-Leonhard classification system of psychosis.

From 1920 to 1950, he was Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and Director of the University Neuropsychiatric Clinic of the Goethe University Frankfurt. He oversaw the construction of the new Neuropsychiatric Clinic, which opened in 1931. Between 1950 and 1960, he was Director of the Research Institute for Brain Pathology and Psychopathology.