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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616
EAN num: 9780471245315
ISBN number: 0471245313
Label: Wiley
Manufacturer: Wiley
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 448
Printing Date: March 03, 1998
Publishing house: Wiley
Release Date: February 17, 1998
Sale Popularity Level: 86115
Studio: Wiley
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
'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.
Amazon.com 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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Excellent, well written and researched historic account of the history of psychiatry during this period. Well worth reading for everyone interested in mental health care.
Rated by buyers 
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First off, any endeavor to chronicle the history of psychiatry is commendable. The radical changes in the perception of the mentally ill and the treatment of mental illness requires a great deal of research and discernment. However, I found this book more encyclopaedic than a fluent historical account. Personally, it will probably serve as more of a reference than a straight through read. It does include many interesting anecdotes, just not fluently enough for me to read as intended.
Rated by buyers 
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This is an unbalanced, often inaccurate, and entirely adulatory history of psychiatry, masquerading as scholarship. Shorter finally lost me at the point where he describes ice-pick lobotomies, of which he is mildly diapproving, as an "adventure."
Rated by buyers 
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I really enjoyed the part of this book on the history of psychiatry. Unfortunately only about 60% of the book is on this topic and the rest consists of Shorter's unbalanced opinions. As a Psychiartic Registrar/resident slightly more simpathetic to the Biological approach, even I found this book extremely biased. Shorter's concrete style of reasoning makes him far more suitable to write a book on the history of surgery. The finer nuances and richness of the field of psychiatry is clearly outside his grasp.
Rated by buyers -
Shorter's book is an important addition to the history of psychiatry. It falls short because of Shorter's "over kill" in his polemic against psychoanalysis. The Freudian perspective needs thoughtful criticism, but Shorter's attacks become carping. Psychoanalysis has made important cultural contributions, and many people have received benefit from the analyst's couch. Good history should have a direction, even a perspective. But Shorter's history would have been better served with a calmer and more balanced voice.
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