[On the history of taking up the word "irre" and its derived forms into the nomenclature of German psychiatry].

At the threshold from the 18th to the 19th century, the development of the psychiatry in Germany - as a subject of science and as a health service - made it necessary to find adequate terms for the new perception of mental illness and people suffering from it. At that time, some more or less discriminating expressions with origins in the medieval or early modern German, some words derived from the Latin language of scientists, and some new terms used in contemporary theories on the explanation of psychic disorder, constituted "eine verwirrende Vielfalt der Gattungsnamen für psychische Krankheit" (a confusing multiplicity of names for mental illness) - (F. Nasse 1818). To make an end to this multiplicity, in the last decade of the 18th century some experts proposed to use terms derived from the word "irre" as standard expressions for illness, symptoms and patients in psychiatry as well as for the new elements of the emerging psychiatric health sector. The word "irre" with the meaning "geistig gestört" (mentally disordered) was part of the German vocabulary since the end of the Middle Ages. According to its advocates, it seemed to be suitable as new standard term, because it was not linked to discriminating prejudices with respect to its origin and to the understanding of that time. Therefore it met the contemporary demand for a more humanitarian behaviour towards ill people. But it took 20 years of discussion and clarification until this nomenclature was accepted in the new subject psychiatry and rested well established for nearly the next 100 years.