Honorio Delgado

Honorio Delgado Espinosa (September 26, 1892 – November 28, 1969) was a Peruvian teacher, researcher, humanist, philosopher who was influenced by psychoanalysis, linguist, and scholar, born in Arequipa, Peru. Delgado graduated from the School of Psychology at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru.

Life The early part of Delgado's career was marked by an adherence to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic principles and included frequent correspondence. By the mid-1930s, Delgado had developed an interest in phenomenology. He contributed to biological developments in the treatment of psychiatric disorders by the use of sodium nucleate in the management of psychotic agitation in 1917 and the use of phenobarbital for the control of seizures in 1919. He was the first in Latin America to try malaria therapy in the treatment of general paresis and the use of chlorpromazine in the treatment of schizophrenia. In 1957, he co-founded an international organization focused on neuropsychopharmacology, later known as the Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacologicum (CINP), in Zurich, Switzerland.

Delgado was a member of the Real Academia Española, based in Madrid. He authored 450 articles and two dozen books on topics such as personality and character, the rehumanization of scientific culture, the spiritual formation of the individual, as well as ecology and existentialism. In 1918, he co-founded the first psychiatric journal in Latin America, Revista de Psiquiatría y Disciplinas Conexas (Journal of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines), the previous edition of the Revista de Psiquiatría (Journal of Psychiatry). In 1953, he published a textbook on psychiatry. Another one of Delgado's contributions was his development of the current psychiatric nomenclature, represented by the DSM series (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). From the early 1950s, Delgado wanted descriptive diagnostic criteria that he thought should be accurate, free from ideological biases, based on multifactorial causality, include recognition of the biological basis of mental illness, and incorporate a hierarchy of descriptive criteria.

He emphasized the need for research to demonstrate diagnostic validity, and for the recognition of different levels of operations of the human psyche.