PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGY: Manfred Bleuler and the History of DSD research and treatment in Zurich in the 1950s-1980s

This project investigates the neglected scientific history of the emergence of PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGY and its entanglement with the treatment of Differences of Sex Development (DSD) at the University Psychiatric Clinic Burghölzli in Zurich in the 1950s-1980s. When biomedical approaches emerged in the first half of the 20th century that sought to explain sex variance through the effects of hormones, scientific and clinical attention increasingly shifted toward the psyche. In the mid-20th century, Manfred Bleuler, as director of the Burghölzli, strove to merge endocrinology with psychiatry to explain and regulate the diverse psyche through hormones and to establish PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGY as a new field of research. In the 1950s and 1960s, Zurich became an internationally recognized center for the investigation and clinical management of DSD through hormonal interventions. Despite its historical significance, the Zurich clinic’s use of hormones bridging body and psyche in DSD patients remains largely unexplored. The project PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGY addresses this research gap by systematically examining archival material in Zurich State Archive, as well as by organizing a workshop, an academic conference, and a joint special issue with CRC-internal and external scholars in the history of science, gender studies and biomedicine. By addressing critical gaps in the history of hormones, DSD and psychiatric treatment and by foregrounding Zurich’s central role in German-speaking psychiatric and psychological discourses PSYCHOENDOCRINOLOGY contributes to a key perspective to CRC 1665 and lays the groundwork for a larger research proposal to CRC 1665, which explores the entanglements of psyche, hormones, and sex diversity.