Meyer, Adolf

Meyer, Adolf äˈdôlf mīˈər [key], 1866–1950, American neurologist and psychiatrist, b. Switzerland, M.D. Zürich, 1892. He emigrated to the United States in 1892 and was professor of psychiatry at Cornell (1904–9) and at Johns Hopkins (1910–41), where he was also director of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic. He was active in the mental hygiene movement from its inception (1908), initiating the term “mental hygiene” to describe the maintenance of mental stability. His integrative system of treating mental illness, called psychobiology, demanded that each problem be considered in the light of the patient's total personality.

See his collected papers, ed. by E. E. Winters (4 vol., 1950–52).

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