Description
When Albert Schweitzer decided to go to Africa, he also decided to go as a medical doctor rather than a missionary. To that end, he enrolled in medical school, passing his medical examinations in 1911. The Psychiatric Study of Jesus was his doctoral thesis, first published in German in 1913.
In this slim volume, Schweitzer critiques three psychiatric studies of Jesus which were then influential. He points out problems with the authors’ knowledge of the historical Jesus and with their medical understanding. Schweitzer does not himself perform an analysis of the state of Jesus’ mind, but does suggest that the existing evidence does not indicate any mental imbalance of the sort espoused by the other authors.
