V.M. Bekhterev
Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev (January 20, 1857 — December 24, 1927, Moscow) — an outstanding Russian medical psychiatrist, neuropathologist, physiologist, psychologist, founder of reflexology and pathopsychological trends in Russia, academician.
In 1907 he founded the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg, now named after Bekhterev.
Biography
He was born into the family of a petty civil servant in the village of Sorali, Yelabuga district, Vyatka province, presumably on January 20, 1857 (he was baptized on January 23, 1857). He was a representative of the ancient Vyatka family of Bekhterevs. Educated at the Vyatka Gymnasium and the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. At the end of the course (1878), Bekhterev devoted himself to the study of mental and nervous diseases and for this purpose he worked at the clinic of prof. I. P. Merzheevsky.
In 1879, Bekhterev was accepted as a full member of the St. Petersburg Society of Psychiatrists. And in 1884 he was sent abroad, where he studied with Dubois-Raymond (Berlin), Wundt (Leipzig), Meinert (Vienna), Charcot (Paris) and others. — Associate Professor of the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy, and since 4 he was a professor at Kazan University and head of the psychiatric clinic of the Kazan district hospital. While working at Kazan University, he created a psychophysiological laboratory and founded the Kazan Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists. In 1981 he headed the Department of Nervous and Mental Diseases of the Medico-Surgical Academy. In the same year he founded the journal Neurological Bulletin. In 1885, Vladimir Mikhailovich was appointed a member of the medical council of the Ministry of the Interior, and in 1893 a member of the military medical scientific council under the Minister of War and at the same time a member of the council of the mentally ill. From 1894 he also taught at the Women’s Medical Institute.
He organized in St. Petersburg the Society of Psychoneurologists and the Society for Normal and Experimental Psychology and the Scientific Organization of Labor. He edited the journals «Review of Psychiatry, Neurology and Experimental Psychology», «Study and Education of Personality», «Issues of the Study of Labor» and others.
In November 1900, the two-volume Bekhterev’s Pathways of the Spinal Cord and the Brain was nominated by the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Academician K.M. Baer Prize. In 1900 Bekhterev was elected chairman of the Russian Society for Normal and Pathological Psychology.
After the completion of work on the seven volumes of «Fundamentals of the Doctrine of the Functions of the Brain», Bekhterev’s special attention as a scientist began to be attracted to the problems of psychology. Proceeding from the fact that mental activity arises as a result of the work of the brain, he considered it possible to rely mainly on the achievements of physiology, and, above all, on the doctrine of combinational (conditioned) reflexes. In 1907-1910, Bekhterev published three volumes of the book Objective Psychology. The scientist argued that all mental processes are accompanied by reflex motor and vegetative reactions that are available for observation and registration.
He was a member of the editorial committee of the multi-volume «Traite international de psychologie pathologique» («International Treatise on Pathological Psychology») (Paris, 1908-1910), for which he wrote several chapters. In 1908, the Psychoneurological Institute founded by Bekhterev began its work in St. Petersburg.
In May 1918, Bekhterev petitioned the Council of People’s Commissars to organize an Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity. Soon the Institute was opened, and Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev was its director until his death. In 1927 he was awarded the title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR.
He died suddenly on December 24, 1927 in Moscow, a few hours after he had poisoned himself with ice cream at the Bolshoi Theater.
After his death, V. M. Bekhterev left his own school and hundreds of students, including 70 professors.
Scientific contribution
Bekhterev investigated a wide range of psychiatric, neurological, physiological, morphological and psychological problems. In his approach, he always focused on a comprehensive study of the problems of the brain and man. Carrying out the reformation of modern psychology, he developed his own teaching, which he consistently designated as objective psychology (from 1904), then as psychoreflexology (from 1910) and as reflexology (from 1917). He paid special attention to the development of reflexology as a complex science of man and society (different from physiology and psychology), designed to replace psychology.
Widely used the concept of «nervous reflex». Introduced the concept of «associative-motor reflex» and developed the concept of this reflex. He discovered and studied the pathways of the human spinal cord and brain, described some brain formations. Established and identified a number of reflexes, syndromes and symptoms. Physiological Bekhterev’s reflexes (scapular-shoulder reflex, large spindle reflex, expiratory, etc.) make it possible to determine the state of the corresponding reflex arcs, and pathological reflexes (Mendel-Bekhterev’s dorsal reflex, carpal-finger reflex, Bekhterev-Jacobson’s reflex) reflect the defeat of the pyramidal pathways.
Described some diseases and developed methods of their treatment (“Postencephalitic symptoms of Bechterev”, “Psychotherapeutic triad of Bechterev”, “Phobic symptoms of Bechterev”, etc.). In 1892, Bekhterev described «stiffness of the spine with its curvature as a special form of the disease» («Bekhterev’s disease», «Ankylosing spondylitis»). Bekhterev singled out such diseases as «chorea epilepsy», «syphilitic multiple sclerosis», «acute cerebellar ataxia of alcoholics».
Created a number of drugs. «Ankylosing spondylitis» was widely used as a sedative. For many years he studied the problems of hypnosis and suggestion, including alcoholism. For more than 20 years he studied the issues of sexual behavior and child rearing. Developed objective methods for studying the neuropsychic development of children. He repeatedly criticized psychoanalysis (the teachings of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, etc.), but at the same time contributed to the theoretical, experimental and psychotherapeutic work on psychoanalysis, which was carried out at the Institute for the Study of the Brain and Mental Activity headed by him.
In addition, Bekhterev developed and studied the relationship between nervous and mental illnesses, psychopathy and circular psychosis, the clinic and pathogenesis of hallucinations, described a number of forms of obsessive-compulsive disorders, various manifestations of mental automatism. For the treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases, he introduced combination-reflex therapy for neuroses and alcoholism, psychotherapy by the method of distraction, and collective psychotherapy.
Creation
In addition to the dissertation «Experience in the clinical study of body temperature in certain forms of mental illness» (St. Petersburg, 1881), Bekhterev owns numerous works on the normal anatomy of the nervous system; pathological anatomy of the central nervous system; physiology of the central nervous system; in the clinic of mental and nervous diseases and, finally, in psychology (The formation of our ideas about space, Bulletin of Psychiatry, 1884).
In these works, Bekhterev was engaged in the study and study of the course of individual bundles in the central nervous system, the composition of the white matter of the spinal cord and the course of fibers in the gray matter, and at the same time, on the basis of the experiments performed, elucidation of the physiological significance of individual parts of the central nervous system (optic tubercles, vestibular branches of the auditory nerve, inferior and superior olives, quadrigemina, etc.).
Bekhterev also managed to obtain some new data on the localization of various centers in the cerebral cortex (for example, on the localization of skin — tactile and pain — sensations and muscle consciousness on the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, Vrach, 1883) and also on the physiology of the motor centers of the cerebral cortex («Doctor», 1886). Many works of Bekhterev are devoted to the description of little-studied pathological processes of the nervous system and individual cases of nervous diseases.
Works: Fundamentals of the doctrine of the functions of the brain, St. Petersburg, 1903-07; Objective psychology, St. Petersburg, 1907-10; Psyche and life, 2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1904; General diagnostics of diseases of the nervous system, parts 1-2, St. Petersburg, 1911-15; Collective reflexology, P., 1921: General foundations of human reflexology, M.-P., 1923; Conducting pathways of the spinal cord and brain, M.-L., 1926; Brain and activity, M.-L., 1928: Selected. Prod., M., 1954.
references
- Site dedicated to V. M. Bekhterev
- The role of suggestion in public life — speech by V. M. Bekhterev on December 18, 1897
- Biographical materials about V. M. Bekhterev from the Khronos project
- Biographical entry in the dictionary «History of psychology in faces»
Regarding the unexpected death of V.M. Bekhterev, there are three versions. Among the closest students of V.M. Bekhterev, there was never, of course, not published, his own version of the teacher’s death: death at the moment of intimacy with one of the young employees, the so-called “sweet death” in the terminology of French authors. According to another version, the death of Bekhterev is connected with the fact that it was he who diagnosed the death of V.I. Lenin: «syphilis of the brain.» The most plausible, however, should be considered the version according to which Bekhterev was poisoned on the orders of I.V. Stalin after Bekhterev, after Stalin’s consultation about his dry hand, spoke of him as «an ordinary paranoid.»