History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology - Annotated by Edwin R Wallace & John Gach (Paperback)

About the Book

Psychiatry has always straddled the boundary between social and biological science. Here, interdisciplinary contributors trace psychiatry's evolution in its social, political, and philosophical contexts, charting its rise as a legitimate medical specialty.

Book Synopsis

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.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

From the reviews:

"The main audience for this new book is educators who want to be good scholars of intellectual history; the remaining readers are those who just want to deeply understand how present concepts of the mind were invented. This book, written ill a language of a high but approachable erudition, could serve as a knowledgeable guide to all of them in their journeys to a different level of understanding about how psychiatry actually works and thinks as a discipline. ... I enthusiastically recommend History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology-it is refreshingly self-aware, an enjoyable read, and could provide hours of material for seminars with students to remind them of Santayana's mordant warning that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (Antolin C. Trinidad, MD, George Washington University, Washington, DC, JAMA, February 18, 2009-Vo1. 301, No. 7)

"History of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology is one of the largest edited volumes on the history of psychiatry ... . The chapters cover the history of psychiatry in the United States, France, Germany, and ... the United Kingdom. ... a contribution that can help students and physicians to become acquainted with that history. ... For a reader who seeks a convenient overview of research in the history of psychiatry conducted during the last two decades, this volume could be handy." (Hans Pols, ISIS, Vol. 100 (2), 2009)

"It devotes a substantial amount of space to a prolegomenon; an introductory chapter to the historical and methodological concerns, and adds an extremely useful and comprehensive annotated bibliography. ... would be worthy of publication in its own right, and its value is all the greater for the way in way in which it contextualizes the rest of the book. ... It places the philosophy of psychiatry centrally in both the practice and academic worlds ... . It is a very fine book." (Mark Welch, Metapsychology Online Reviews, September,2009)

About the Author

Edwin Wallace IV, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Research Professor of Bioethics at the University of South Carolina. Until 1995 he was Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical College of Georgia. In 1984 he published Historiography and Causation in Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press) and is generally regarded as an expert on the history of psychiatry and medical psychology. Dr. Wallace is a cofounder of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (a 1200-member international organization that publishes a quarterly journal Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology with Johns Hopkins University Press). John Gach is owner and president of John Gach Books, Inc., an antiquarian bookselling firm that has specialized in rare and out-of-print psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology, and neuroscience for 35 years. Regarded as a leading authority on the bibliography of books in the fields his firm deals in, Gach has published a number of review essays in journals such as the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, and a chapter in Essays in the History of Psychiatry, edited by Edwin Wallace and Lucius Pressley. Most recently he edited for Thoemmes Press the series Foundations of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, which reprinted both the eighth German edition of Emil Kraepelin's Psychiatrie and the five Kraepelin titles published in English during his lifetime. He has also been engaged in a long term project to describe and comprehend the phenomenology of book collecting, about which topic he has lectured.