On the occasion of the second Italian edition (from the 15th edition, of 1983) of Eugen Bleuler’s Textbook of Psychiatry (1st original edition: 1916), the Author remembers some aspects of her psychiatric residency training at end of the 1960s at the Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital in Zurich (at the time directed by Manfred Bleuler, son of Eugen Bleuler), where she went in order to complete also her psychoanalytic training at the "Psychoanalytic Seminar Zurich" (Psychoanalytisches Seminar Zürich [PSZ]) with Paul Parin and Fritz Morgenthaler. Among other things, some traits of Manfred Bleuler’s personality and the atmosphere at the morning meetings he used to chair are described. Some considerations on the end of a cycle of the history of psychiatry, and of a way of conceiving and practicing psychiatric care, are also made.
Keywords: Bleuler, Burghölzli, Zurich, history of psychiatry, psychopathology