East-Side story: The standardisation of psychotropic drugs at the Charité Psychiatric Clinic, 1955–1970

The present article illustrates the history of psychotropic drugs introduced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from 1945 onwards. We begin by examining the introduction of an anti-depressant and a tranquilizer at the university psychiatric clinic, Charité, in East Berlin. On the basis of patient files, we consider the monitoring routines, altered by the use of psychotropic drugs, and the difficulties that arose when these routines were translated into existing research programs. In the 1960s, attempts to evaluate the psychiatric practice were based on psychopathology whereas at the end of the 1960s there was a shift to “target symptoms”.

► We examine daily routines of using antidepressant and tranquilizer drugs at the Charité.
► Clinical practise was dominated by Karl Leonhard´s psychopathology.
► But translation of every day practice into Leonhards research program was problematic.
► Discourse on drugs moved to target symptoms, marginalizing psychopathological research.