A history of psychiatry : from the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac

"PPPP . . . To compress 200 years of psychiatric theory and practice into a compelling and coherent narrative is a fine achievement . . . . What strikes the reader [most] are Shorter's storytelling skills, his ability to conjure up the personalities of the psychiatrists who shaped the discipline and the conditions under which they and their patients lived."--Ray Monk The Mail on Sunday magazine, U.K. "An opinionated, anecdote-rich history. . . . While psychiatrists may quibble, and Freudians and other psychoanalysts will surely squawk, those without a vested interest will be thoroughly entertained and certainly enlightened."--Kirkus Reviews. "Shorter tells his story with immense panache, narrative clarity, and genuinely deep erudition."--Roy Porter Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. In A History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter shows us the harsh, farcical, and inspiring realities of society's changing attitudes toward and attempts to deal with its mentally ill and the efforts of generations of scientists and physicians to ease their suffering. He paints vivid portraits of psychiatry's leading historical figures and pulls no punches in assessing their roles in advancing or sidetracking our understanding of the origins of mental illness. Shorter also identifies the scientific and cultural factors that shaped the development of psychiatry. He reveals the forces behind the unparalleled sophistication of psychiatry in Germany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the emergence of the United States as the world capital of psychoanalysis. This engagingly written, thoroughly researched, and fiercely partisan account is compelling reading for anyone with a personal, intellectual, or professional interest in psychiatry.

Preface 1 The Birth of Psychiatry vii A World without Psychiatry 1 Traditional Asylums 4 Heralding the Therapeutic Asylum 8 Organizing the Therapeutic Asylum 18 Nervous Illness and Nonpsychiatrists 22 Toward a Biological Psychiatry 26 Romantic Psychiatry 29 2 The Asylum Era 33 National Traditions 34 The Pressure of Numbers 46 Why the Increase? 48 Redistribution of Illness 49 Rising Rate of Psychiatric Illness 53 Dead End 65 3 The First Biological Psychiatry 69 Enter Ideas 69 A German Century 71 French Disasters 81 Anglo-Saxon Laggards 87 Degeneration 93 The End of the First Biological Psychiatry 99 An American Postscript 109 4 Nerves 113 Nerves Better than Madness 114 The Flight of Madness into the Spa 119 Tired Nerves and the Rest Cure 129 Neurology Discovers Psychotherapy 136 5 The Psychoanalytic Hiatus 145 Freud and His Circle 146 The Battle Begins 154 American Origins 160 The Arrival of the Europeans 166 Triumph 170 Psychoanalysis and the American Jews 181 6 Alternatives 190 Fever Cure and Neurosyphilis 192 Early Drugs 196 Prolonged Sleep 200 Shock and Coma 207 Electroshock 218 The Lobotomy Adventure 225 Social and Community Psychiatry 229 7 The Second Biological Psychiatry 239 The Genetic Strand 240 The First Drug That Worked 246 The Cornucopia 255 Neuroscience 262 Antipsychiatry 272 Return to "the Community" 277 The Battle over ECT 281 8 From Freud to Prozac 288 Maintaining Market Share 289 A Nation Hungers for Psychotherapy 293 Science versus Fashion in Diagnosis 295 The Decline of Psychoanalysis 305 Cosmetic Psychopharmacology 314 Why Psychiatry? 325 Notes 329 Index 421