The more I read about psychiatry, the more I realized the importance of its history. Many of the problems besetting the discipline today - such as the definition of specific illnesses, the criteria for diagnoses, the lack of clear biological markers, the mind/brain problem - were prominent from the beginning. Moreover, while the particulars have changed, the intensity of the arguments has not. Learning about the origins of modern psychiatry in the nineteenth century helps us understand its concepts and terminology. We also gain perspective on contemporary issues. After chronicling the formative years, I devote a lengthy final chapter to evaluating nineteenth century achievements in light of current knowledge.
A central theme of the book is the scientific outlook of psychiatry’s early actors. Wilhelm Griesinger and Karl Kahlbaum were influential spokesmen for the new empirical approach while Bernard Gudden, Franz Nissl and Emil Kraepelin spent as much time - or more - in the laboratory as they did in the clinic. Gudden and Nissl were brain anatomists, Kraepelin an experimental psychologist. In addition to these men, I tell the stories of Philippe Pinel, Jean-Etienne Esquirol, Benjamin Rush, Johann Heinroth, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Sigmund Freud, and many others.
232 pages, 30 illustrations
Available from Amazon and Logos Verlag
According to my editor, buying from Logos Verlag is the "cheapest and fastest" way to order from North America.
A central theme of the book is the scientific outlook of psychiatry’s early actors. Wilhelm Griesinger and Karl Kahlbaum were influential spokesmen for the new empirical approach while Bernard Gudden, Franz Nissl and Emil Kraepelin spent as much time - or more - in the laboratory as they did in the clinic. Gudden and Nissl were brain anatomists, Kraepelin an experimental psychologist. In addition to these men, I tell the stories of Philippe Pinel, Jean-Etienne Esquirol, Benjamin Rush, Johann Heinroth, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Sigmund Freud, and many others.
232 pages, 30 illustrations
Available from Amazon and Logos Verlag
According to my editor, buying from Logos Verlag is the "cheapest and fastest" way to order from North America.
Chapter titles
Introduction
1 Institutional Reforms
2 Cutting Nature at its Joints
3 Mind, Brain or Both?
4 A New Vision for Psychiatry
5 Bernhard Gudden at the Upper Bavarian District Mental Hospital
6 The Tragic Deaths of the King and the Professor
7 A Mismatched Pair of Rising Stars
8 Experimental Psychology
9 Kraepelin and Nissl in Heidelberg
10 A Very Complex Thing
11 Seeing is Believing, or Maybe Not
12 Mind-Altering Drugs and Disease-Causing Poisons
13 Psychosis
14 Dementia praecox
15 A Classification for the Twentieth Century
16 Nineteenth Century Psychiatry Today and in the Future
1 Institutional Reforms
2 Cutting Nature at its Joints
3 Mind, Brain or Both?
4 A New Vision for Psychiatry
5 Bernhard Gudden at the Upper Bavarian District Mental Hospital
6 The Tragic Deaths of the King and the Professor
7 A Mismatched Pair of Rising Stars
8 Experimental Psychology
9 Kraepelin and Nissl in Heidelberg
10 A Very Complex Thing
11 Seeing is Believing, or Maybe Not
12 Mind-Altering Drugs and Disease-Causing Poisons
13 Psychosis
14 Dementia praecox
15 A Classification for the Twentieth Century
16 Nineteenth Century Psychiatry Today and in the Future
Review
``Ronald Chase has provided fascinating information about the 19th century scientists' thinking on behavioral disorders: how to identify them, how to treat them, how to understand them ... He is a terrific writer and has compiled very interesting stories that bring to life the thinking of the time and the condition of serious mental illnesses in their first stages of understanding ... The author weaves the work of the 20th to 21st centuries nicely into his story ... gives optimism for a brain-based understanding in the future.''
Carol Tamminga, M.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Carol Tamminga, M.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center