A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac |
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A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac
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by Edward Shorter
Sales Rank: 319594
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List Price: $35.00
$24.40
At Amazon
on 6-16-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 448 pages
Published by: WileyEdition: 2nd Edition March 3, 1998
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0471245313
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0471245315
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.5 pounds
Product Review
The history of madness and its treatment is a fascinating one. At one time, the mentally ill were diagnosed as demonically possessed; later, when mental illness became the province of psychoanalysts, those conditions that are actually physical in nature, such as schizophrenia or manic depression, went insufficiently treated, their sufferers consigned to asylums. In his book, A History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto, presents a concise chronology of mental illness and its treatment. Shorter favors a biological understanding of these disorders, concentrating on medical approaches to helping the seriously mentally ill.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Shorter cites recent research indicating that adult-onset schizophrenia is genetically influenced and often traceable to uterine trauma or difficult birth. In his view, brain biology and genetics underlie much mental illness, and biological psychiatry-combining drugs with psychotherapy-has replaced Freudian psychoanalysis as the dominant paradigm for explaining and treating a host of disorders. In this richly informative, iconoclastic, sure-to-be-controversial chronicle, Shorter, professor of the history of medicine at the University of Toronto, argues that Freud, by turning psychoanalysis into a movement instead of a method of objective inquiry, fostered a stifling orthodoxy, therapists' arrogance toward patients and scientific stagnation. He defends electroshock as a valuable tool in the treatment of depression; identifies German physician Emil Kraepelin, systematizer of diagnoses-rather than Freud-as the central figure in the history of psychiatry; and dismisses as unhistorical nonsense Michel Foucault's theory that psychiatry arose in a collusion between capitalism and the state as a means to control deviant individuals. While this study will not end the nature-versus-nurture debate, it mounts a formidable challenge to strict adherents of the talking therapies. Photos.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (Hardcover)
I loved this book. Terrific. Over and over it tied together and made sense of things that had puzzled me. To get personal: in the fifties, my father spent a small fortune on traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. And it did him a lot of good. For years, I believed Freudian psycyoanalysis was scientific. For one things, it just _had_ to be. No charlatan could go to the effort and expense of getting an MD, then board certification in psychiatry, then undergo psychoanalysis, just in order to con people. Yet in some way that I didn't quite understand, I became aware than nowadays Freudian psychoanalysis is considered to be a pseudoscience, on about the same level as orgone boxes or homeopathy or Christian science. How _could_ my parents have fallen for it? How _could_ the medical community? Well, Shorter explains what happened in a way that makes sense, seems clear, and (to my mind) is really quite sympathetic to the psychoanalytic community and its clients. Along the way he ties up a lot of loose ends. All through the book I kept saying to myself things like, "Oh, so _that's_ what 'neurasthenia' was" (people in novels written early in the century often had it). "Wow, so that's what the word 'degenerate' is really referring to."
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A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac
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