[Development of the specialty fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy in East Germany]

The development of psychiatry and/with psychotherapy ever since the beginning of the German Democratic Republic after WW2 is described and analysed. The author's main focus is on the confrontation, addition, and cooperation of both the classical medicine of matters and medicine of mind with conflicting, and at least varying paradigmatic reference. The pro and cons on shock therapy are discussed as a crucial point, here. The author holds that shock therapy interferes with the basics of a therapy where the patient is an integral and responsible part of the work as the mode of such treatment annihilates the Leitmotiv of psychotherapy within the framework of social psychiatry.