[Sociology as a Major Factor for the Psychiatrie-Enquete in the Federal Republic of Germany - Results from Expert Interviews and Document Analyses].

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the influence of sociology as a discipline on the Psychiatrie-Enquete by analysing interviews with expert (psychiatrist, psychologist, sociologist etc.) witnesses of the Enquete process and by analysing pertinent documents.

METHODS: 24 interviews were conducted and analysed using qualitative secondary analysis.

RESULTS: Sociological texts and research results influenced the professional development of psychiatrists at the time. Cross-talk between psychiatry and sociology developed through seminal sociological analyses of psychiatric institutions and the interest taken in medical institutions in a number of sociological texts. Inter-disciplinary joint studies (of sociologists and psychiatrists) affected the research interest and professional behaviour of psychiatrists involved in the process on the way to the Psychiatrie-Enquete.

CONCLUSION: Tenacity of psychiatrists' systems of opinion was dissolved by impulses from the sociological thought community. The forms of contact between the psychiatric and the sociological thought collective which we could reconstruct are an example of the evolution of knowledge and practice through transdisciplinary communication.