Burghölzli

Burghölzli is the common name given for the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The hospital is located on "Burghölzli", a wooded hill in the district of Riesbach of southeastern Zürich.

The former convent buildings of Predigerkirche Zürich were also used after the abolition of the monastery by the hospital. After the construction of the new hospital in 1842, they became the so-called "Versorgungsanstalt" where chronically ill, old, incurable mental patients were housed; the contemporaries complained unsustainable states that were solved in 1870, when the Burghölzli sanatory was built

The history of the hospital began in the early 1860s, when internist Wilhelm Griesinger at the University of Zurich made plans for the creation of a modern psychiatric clinic for humane treatment of the mentally ill. Although Griesinger died before the building was established in 1870, he is considered the founder of Burghölzli. From 1870 until 1879, the hospital had three directors, Bernhard von Gudden, Gustav Huguenin and Eduard Hitzig. All three men practiced medicine from a biological basis, with brain pathology and physiology being the general focus of their research.

Auguste-Henri Forel was the fourth director of Burghölzli, and spent nearly twenty years at the helm. Under his leadership, the hospital began to gain recognition throughout the medical world. Forel was able to combine the "dynamic approach" of French psychiatry with the biological orientation of the German school of psychiatric thought. In 1898 Eugen Bleuler became director of the Burghölzli, where he would remain until 1927. The "Bleuler era" is considered the most illustrious period at the hospital, largely due to the advent of psychoanalysis, usage of Freudian psychiatric theories, and the creative work of Bleuler's assistant, Carl Gustav Jung. Bleuler was followed as director by Hans-Wolfgang Maier and afterwards by his son Manfred Bleuler.

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