Patient files, textbooks and published articles of the time show that the wide range of psychiatric therapies of the 1950s and 1960s was also used in the early German Democratic Republic (GDR). The use of insulin coma therapy, cardiazol and electroconvulsive therapies and especially of leucotomy in the GDR must not only be seen in the context of the international development and debate concerning these therapies up to the introduction of psychopharmaceutic therapy but also, in a similar way as in the Federal Republic of Germany, in relation to the locally sometimes different availability of insulin and cardiazol in the post-war period, different schools of academic thought and scientific research interest and priorities of the clinics concerned.
Keywords: Cardiazol; Electroshock; Insulin coma; Psychosurgery; Shock therapy.