History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology

Beschreibung

The first English-language comprehensive reference on the history of psychiatry since 1966. The Romans knew that Nero was insane. Shakespeare’s Macbeth asked his doctor to treat "a mind diseased." The people of the European Enlightenment era pondered whether the asylum inmates were mad or simply bad. As a discipline, psychiatry has always walked a fine if not easily defined line between social and biological science. History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology traces this evolution in its social, political, and philosophical contexts, charting the rise of psychology as a legitimate field of scientific pursuit, and of psychiatry as a medical specialty. An interdisciplinary team of noted historians (including Sander Gilman, Dora Weiner, Hannah Decker, and the recently deceased dean of American psychiatric history, George Mora) has distilled centuries of history—protracted debates, false starts, and missteps included—resulting in an engaging and inspiring narrative of history and methodology in the making. Highlights include: A prologue dealing with philosophical and methodological history as it applies to psychology and psychiatry The birth of brain science in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance The roots of modern psychiatry in the French Revolution Changing concepts of schizophrenia and depression The influence of neurology on psychiatry Evolutions in treatment: mental institutions, hypnotherapy, pharmacotherapy The emergence of psychoanalysis and "national psychologies" in Europe and America Modern critiques, including the chapter "Thoughts Toward a Critique of Biological Psychiatry" Its wide scope, divergent viewpoints, and insistence on viewing historical periods through their own lenses and not our own makes this History a must-have reference for scholars of psychiatry, psychology, and medicine. At the same time, it is accessible enough for the lay reader with some background in the field.
Most of the prefatory issues are extensively elaborated upon in the Prolegomenon, which also contains the complete references to the texts and authors discussed below. Nevertheless, the “Preface” would be grossly incomplete without touching on some of these issues, books, and scholars. Too, many of this book’s chapters (e. g. , Mora’s, Marx’s, D. B. Weiner’s) examine and “reference” important earlier, as well as contemporary, general histories of psychiatry and specialized monographs; in German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Also, in his 1968 Short History of Psychiatry, d- cussed below, Ackerknecht (pp. xi–xii) references important nineteenth and earlier-twentieth century psychiatric histories in English, French, and German. Such citations will of course not be repeated here. Finally, thanks to several publishers’re-editions of dozens of classical psychiatric texts; one can consult their bibliographies as well. See “Prolegomenon” for references to these splendid series. In a rough-and-ready sense, medical history began in classical Greece—for example, On Ancient Medicine. While traditionally included in the Hippocratic corpus, this text seems more likely to have been written by a non- or even anti-Hippocratic doctor. Moreover, the Hippocratic and other schools were hardly as secular as we now suppose. On Epilepsy, for example, does not so much declare the prevalent denotation of it as the “sacred disease” erroneous as it does that it is no more nor less sacred than any other disease.
Edwin Wallace is a well-known historian in psychiatry and medical psychology Contributors are well-known scholars in the areas covered There are no recent books covering so wide a time span

This book chronicles the conceptual and methodological facets of psychiatry and medical psychology throughout history. Many of these are pertinent to contemporary issues in general medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences. Section One, "Periods," reviews the prehistory and history of the field from the embryonic psychiatry of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, through the emergence of psychiatry as a medical specialty. Section Two, "Key Topics and Concepts", explores the history of major psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, psychosomatic disorders, the influence of neurology of psychiatry, the evolution and transformation of mental institutions, and the psychoanalytic movement in the United States. Section Three, "Epilogue", is a philosophical treatment of psychiatry as a medical specialty.

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Edwin R. Wallace

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Body and mind Exploration Freud History of psychoanalysis History of psychology Institution Motivation Nation Psychology and biology Renaissance depression neurology psychiatry psychoanalysis psychology

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