Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9780471245315
Year: 1998
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc (US)
Pages: 448


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 engag