Gabriel Langfeldt

Gabriel Langfeldt (23 December 1895 – 28 October 1983)

Career in psychiatry

Born in Kristiansand to Carl Gerhard Magnus Langfeldt, a bank director, and his wife Gudrun Amalie Leversen, Langfeldt was a keynote speaker at the 2nd International Congress for Psychiatry held in Zürich in 1958 devoted to knowledge on "groups of schizophrenia". He travelled to Vienna to study the insulin shock therapy against schizophrenia developed by Manfred Sakel, but was skeptical of the method. The diagnosis was that Hamsun had "permanently impaired mental capabilities" (varig svekkede sjælsevner), a diagnosis particular for judicial observations in Norway. Based on the diagnosis, the prosecutors decided not to pursue criminal proceedings against Hamsun. covering the period from when he was arrested in 1945 to the Supreme Court verdict in 1948. He portrayed Langfeldt as an abusive man who enjoyed power: "he could bully me as much as he wanted – and he wanted a lot", he wrote. "In his personality, in his way of being, Mr. Langfeldt sets himself way above everybody, with his incontestable learning, with his silence at any disagreement, with his show of superiority which seems merely contrived [...] I feel the psychiatrist would have benefited from learning how to smile a little. A smile directed at himself now and then". A main theme for Hamsun is that he had deserved an ordinary trial instead of a stay at a psychiatric clinic and a psychiatric diagnosis. He insists in the book that the hospitalization had harmed his health more than anything else.

Humanism Originally having religious inclinations, Langfeldt gradually developed a secular humanist lifestance. When the Norwegian Humanist Association was founded in 1958, he became a central figure in the organization and chaired the International Humanist and Ethical Unions congress in Norway in 1962. He wrote a book about Albert Schweitzer in 1958 and later corresponded with him. In 1966 he wrote the book Den gylne regel og andre humanistiske moralnormer (The Golden Rule and Other Humanistic Morale Norms).

Personal life Langfeldt married three times. His marriage to his first wife, Eva Antoinette Tutein Poulsson, daughter of professor Edvard Poulsson, was dissolved in 1928; that same year, he married Hjørdis Nilssen, a secretary. His third wife, Else Marie Nilssen, was a sister of his second, deceased wife.

Langfeldt continued to work as a psychiatrist until he was in his eighties. He died in Oslo in 1983. He was a brother of Einar Langfeldt.

Awards and recognition Member, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1941) Stanley R. Dean Award for research in schizophrenia Honorary member, Norwegian Psychiatric Association (1965) Honorary doctorate at University of Helsinki (1966)