Description: From jails to hospitals to the analyst's couch, the venues of psychiatry have shifted amid debate over the nature of mental illness: is it psychosocial or biological? Andrew Scull follows the path from the asylum to the street, from shock therapies to talk therapy, and on to psychiatry's dependence on drugs, whose side effects are often ignored.
Brief description: Andrew Scull is the author of Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine; Hysteria: The Disturbing History; Madness: A Very Short Introduction, and Psychiatry and Its Discontents, among other books. Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, he won the Roy Porter Medal for lifetime contribution to the history of medicine and the Eric Carlson award for lifetime contributions to the history of psychiatry. He has contributed to many documentaries, including PBS's "Mysteries of Mental Illness" and "The Lobotomist," has written for the The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Times Literary Supplement, Scientific American, and The Nation, and blogs for Psychology Today and Mad in America.
Review Quotes: An indisputable masterpiece...a comprehensive, fascinating, and persuasive narrative of the past 200 years of psychiatry in America...[Scull] is unsparing in his critiques when motives of money, power, and fame have tempted psychiatrists to disregard the welfare of those under their care.--Richard J. McNally "Wall Street Journal" (5/13/2022 12:00:00 AM)