The aim of the talk is to focus on the development of new documentation systems, that created a new understanding of the efficacy of psychotropic drugs.

The fact that the particular effectiveness of psycho-pharmaceuticals only became visible with clinical trials in patients moreover posed a challenge to their evaluation. The psychotropic effects to be observed, however, are conveyed through the subjectiveness of the patients and only become accessible for the clinicians in their comments.

I am going to illustrate that generating a solid concept of effectiveness for psycho-pharmaceuticals was only possible due to new clinical recording systems. Said development of new recording systems took place within the scope of adjusting the conditions of a »clinical experiment», as I refer to the introduction to a controlled clinical trial. However, without intending to conduct a detailed analysis of this process here, I would like to outline the emergence of a new recording system that allows a new concept of effectiveness to materialise. Object of investigation will be the local development of such systems, which entailed extensive semantic changes in the concept of effectiveness.

Using the example of debates in West and East Germany, I will describe the similarities and differences in effectiveness assessment of the two states. In doing so, the discussions eventually shifted from local discussions among different schools within the states to the national level of Systemkonkurrenz, that is, East-West competition. A competition that was in particular interesting for the development in East Germany, since West German researchers hardly ever referred to the GDR.

At first I will delineate the debates of the young West German republic, which finally led to the development of the AMP system. In the second part of the talk I will depict how the standardisation of psycho-pharmaceutical effects was discussed in East Germany, and which positions were confronting each other. Finally I will outline the introduction of the AMP system and its further development in the late GDR. In the third part I am going to elaborate, how the new assessment logic of the AMP system and its East German extension, the Structured Psychopathological Assessment System (Strukturiertes Psychopathologisches Erfassungssystem, SPES), changed the knowledge of psychotropic effects.