Reference · 36 names

Whose name is on your diagnosis?

Psychiatry names its conditions after the doctors who described them, the patients who inspired them, the myths that explain them and, in one case, a baron famous for lying. Here is who each name really belongs to. The descriptions are straight; where an episode borrows the name, the link takes you to the moment.

Name	Person	What it means	Hear it
Freudian slippsychoanalysis	Sigmund Freud1856–1939	A slip of the tongue or memory thought to reveal an unconscious wish. Freud called it a parapraxis and described it in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901).	From Burnout to Punchlines: Freud's Solution · 3:32
Oedipus complexmyth & literature	Oedipus, via Sigmund Freudterm from 1910	Freud's idea that young children feel desire for one parent and rivalry with the other, named for the Greek king in Sophocles' play who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Few modern clinicians take it literally.
Electra complexmyth & literature	Electra, via Carl Jungterm from 1913	Carl Jung's proposed female counterpart to the Oedipus complex, named for the Greek heroine who avenged her father's murder by her mother. Freud rejected the term.
Jungian analysispsychoanalysis	Carl Gustav Jung1875–1961	Jung's analytical psychology, built on the collective unconscious and archetypes such as the shadow and the persona. He broke with Freud in 1913 and popularized the words introvert and extravert.
Kleinian analysispsychoanalysis	Melanie Klein1882–1960	Austrian-British psychoanalyst who pioneered analysis of young children through play and helped found object relations theory, which focuses on how early relationships shape the mind.
Winnicott's good-enough motherpsychoanalysis	Donald Winnicott1896–1971	British pediatrician and psychoanalyst who argued in the 1950s that ordinary, imperfect parenting is what children need, not perfection. He also named the transitional object, such as a security blanket.
Narcissismmyth & literature	Narcissus (Greek myth)psychology term from 1898	Named for the youth who fell in love with his own reflection. Havelock Ellis brought the term into psychology in 1898 and Freud wrote On Narcissism in 1914. Narcissistic personality disorder is a formal diagnosis; the internet uses the word far more loosely.
Sadism and masochismmyth & literature	Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch1740–1814 and 1836–1895	Both terms were coined by psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), after two writers whose novels made the themes famous. Sacher-Masoch was still alive to see his name become a diagnosis.
Mesmerismtreatment	Franz Anton Mesmer1734–1815	The German physician's “animal magnetism” drew crowds in 1780s Paris until a 1784 royal commission that included Benjamin Franklin concluded the effects came from imagination. He left behind the verb mesmerize and an early ancestor of hypnosis.
Kraepelinian dichotomydiagnosis	Emil Kraepelin1856–1926	Kraepelin's 1899 split between dementia praecox, later called schizophrenia, and manic-depressive illness, still the backbone of how psychotic and mood disorders are classified.
Alzheimer's diseasesyndrome	Alois Alzheimer1864–1915	The German psychiatrist described the plaques and tangles in the brain of his patient Auguste Deter in 1906. His colleague Emil Kraepelin put Alzheimer's name on the disease in his textbook a few years later.
Wernicke encephalopathysyndrome	Carl Wernicke1848–1905	Confusion, abnormal eye movements and unsteady gait caused by thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency, often with heavy alcohol use, described by the German neuropsychiatrist in 1881. It is a medical emergency treated with thiamine.
Korsakoff syndromesyndrome	Sergei Korsakoff1854–1900	Severe memory loss with confabulation, described by the Russian psychiatrist in 1887 in people with long-term alcohol use. It is caused by thiamine deficiency and often follows Wernicke encephalopathy.
Klüver–Bucy syndromesyndrome	Heinrich Klüver and Paul Bucy1897–1979 and 1904–1992	Described in monkeys in the late 1930s after removal of both temporal lobes: placidity, putting objects in the mouth, hypersexuality and trouble recognizing objects. The Iceman Cometh's “Bucey-Cleaver syndrome” of hunger, lust and anxiety is the show's affectionate remix.	The Iceman Cometh and the Patient Goeth · 2:22
Capgras delusiondelusion	Joseph Capgras1873–1950	The belief that a familiar person has been replaced by an identical impostor, described by Capgras and Jean Reboul-Lachaux in 1923.
Fregoli delusiondelusion	Leopoldo Fregoli1867–1936	The belief that different people are really one person in disguise, named in 1927 after an Italian stage actor famous for lightning-fast costume changes.
Cotard delusiondelusion	Jules Cotard1840–1889	The belief that one is dead, doesn't exist or has lost internal organs, described by the French neurologist in the early 1880s as the “délire des négations.”
De Clérambault syndromedelusion	Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault1872–1934	Erotomania: the delusional belief that someone, usually of higher status, is secretly in love with you, described by the French psychiatrist in 1921.
Othello syndromemyth & literature	Othello (Shakespeare)term from 1955	Delusional jealousy about a partner's infidelity, named in 1955 by psychiatrists John Todd and Kenneth Dewhurst after Shakespeare's jealous general.
Ganser syndromesyndrome	Sigbert Ganser1853–1931	Giving approximate answers to simple questions (“2 + 2 = 5”), described by the German psychiatrist in 1898 among prisoners awaiting trial.
Charles Bonnet syndromesyndrome	Charles Bonnet1720–1793	Vivid visual hallucinations in people with significant vision loss who know the images aren't real. The Swiss naturalist described it in 1760 in his grandfather, who had cataracts.
Diogenes syndromemyth & literature	Diogenes of Sinopec. 412–323 BC	Severe self-neglect and squalor, often in older adults, named in 1975 after the Greek philosopher who lived in a large jar. Diogenes was famous for owning almost nothing, which makes the name an odd fit for a syndrome that often includes hoarding.
Munchausen syndromesyndrome	Baron Münchhausen1720–1797	Now called factitious disorder: feigning or causing illness in order to be a patient. Named in 1951 by Richard Asher after a German baron famous for tall tales.
Tourette syndromesyndrome	Georges Gilles de la Tourette1857–1904	A neurodevelopmental disorder of motor and vocal tics, described in 1885 by a student of Jean-Martin Charcot. Involuntary swearing, the popular image of it, affects only a minority of people with Tourette's.
Asperger syndromediagnosis	Hans Asperger1906–1980	Described by the Austrian pediatrician in 1944 and folded into autism spectrum disorder in DSM-5 (2013). Use of the name has fallen off since historians documented his role in referring children to a Nazi-era Vienna clinic where children were killed.
Rorschach testtest & scale	Hermann Rorschach1884–1922	The inkblot test the Swiss psychiatrist published in 1921, asking people what they see. How much it reveals is still debated. Rorschach died the next year, at 37.
Beck Depression Inventorytest & scale	Aaron T. Beck1921–2021	A 21-question self-report scale for depression that Beck published in 1961, still among the most widely used. Beck, trained as a psychoanalyst, went on to found cognitive therapy.
Hamilton Depression Rating Scaletest & scale	Max Hamilton1912–1988	A clinician-rated depression scale published in 1960 that became the long-standing yardstick in antidepressant trials.
Kübler-Ross modeltheory & effect	Elisabeth Kübler-Ross1926–2004	The five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) from On Death and Dying (1969), based on interviews with dying patients. Research doesn't support them as a fixed sequence, and she later wrote that grief isn't that tidy.
Maslow's hierarchy of needstheory & effect	Abraham Maslow1908–1970	Maslow's 1943 theory that human needs rise from physical survival up to self-actualization. The famous pyramid diagram was popularized by others after him.
Pavlovian conditioningtheory & effect	Ivan Pavlov1849–1936	Learning by association, from Pavlov's dogs that began salivating at signals linked to food. His 1904 Nobel Prize was for research on digestion, not the dogs' famous drool.
Skinner boxtheory & effect	B. F. Skinner1904–1990	An operant conditioning chamber in which animals learn through rewards and punishments. Skinner's work underpins behavior therapy, and, in spirit, most phone apps.
Dunning–Kruger effecttheory & effect	David Dunning and Justin Krugerpublished 1999	The finding that people with low skill in an area tend to overestimate their ability. Most often cited by people certain it describes someone else.
Hawthorne effecttheory & effect	Hawthorne Works, Western Electricstudies 1924–1932	People change their behavior when they know they're being studied, named for worker-productivity experiments at a Western Electric factory near Chicago.
Stockholm syndrometheory & effect	Norrmalmstorg bank robbery, Stockholm1973	Hostages developing positive feelings toward their captors, named after a 1973 Stockholm bank siege. It isn't a formal diagnosis, and research behind it is thin.
Jumping Frenchmen of Mainesyndrome	George Miller Beardreported 1878	An exaggerated startle reaction the American neurologist reported in 1878 among French-Canadian lumberjacks in Maine. It's a real entry in the medical literature, exactly as The Iceman Cometh says.	The Iceman Cometh and the Patient Goeth · 2:13

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