Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Psychiatry Psychology

  • Breaking Bad: A case study of antisocial personality disorders

    Jason Liu San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States   Both psychopathy and the non-clinical “sociopathy”1 have been diagnosed in infamous serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Gacy, and popular films and TV shows, like American Psycho and Dexter, have drawn from these diagnoses. Psychopathy and sociopathy are amongst the most complex mental…

  • Book review: A History of Insanity and the Asylum

    Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, UK   Cover of A History of Insanity and the Asylum by Juliana Cummings. Mental health topics have long been a source of fascination. In this new book, author Juliana Cummings explores the history of insanity and asylums from the Middle Ages to the modern era, revealing the sometimes-shocking treatment of…

  • Alfred Adler

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   The understanding of mental illness was barren until Freud’s time, scarcely risen from medieval notions of madness, moral inferiority, and witchcraft. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) began his career in histology and experimental physiology during six years spent in Ernst Brucke’s laboratory. He published a book on aphasia and was director of…

  • William Sargant

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Figure 1. William Sargant. Photo by Edward Irvine Halliday, 1967. © National Portrait Gallery, London. Fair use. After the innovative psychology of Freud, Jung, and Adler there was little progress in knowledge either of psychological or organic mechanisms, or their treatment.1 Few psychiatrists had postgraduate training in clinical organic medicine,…

  • Thomas Szasz

    JMS Pearce Hull, England   Figure 1. Thomas Szasz. Crop of photo by Jennyphotos on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 3.0.   “[Mental illness] is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.” – TS Szasz (1920–2012), “The myth of mental illness”1  …

  • Vincenzo Chiarugi, who freed the insane from their chains

    Vincenzo Chiarugi. Via Wikimedia. Vincenzo Chiarugi was one of the pioneers of a more humane treatment of the mentally ill, along with William Tuke (1732–1822) in York and Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and Étienne-Jean Georget (1795–1828) in Paris. They all lived at a time when those with mental illness were frequently confined in dungeons and ill-treated,…

  • The white-collar antisocial personality

    Richard Zhang Farmington, Connecticut, United States   Man in a Hat. Painting by Josef Capek, 1915–16. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. A frequently overlooked topic in psychiatry is “antisocial personality disorder” (ASPD) or “sociopathy,” specifically as it manifests in higher socioeconomic backgrounds and thus evades recognition. I once cared for a well-spoken, charming patient who practiced…

  • Henry Cotton: Pulling teeth to cure disease

    Dr. Henry Cotton believed that all mental illnesses were caused by chronic “focal” infections hidden in various organs. He argued that when these infections spread to the brain, they caused inflammation and mental disorders. To cure these conditions, Cotton advocated the aggressive surgical removal of the infected organ, and for this achieved considerable fame in…

  • Christian Sibelius: Finland’s first professor of psychiatry

    Jonathan Davidson Durham, North Carolina, United States   Photo of Christian Sibelius taken c. 1915–1920 by Atelier Nyblin. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. When the name Sibelius is mentioned, most people will think of the famous Finnish composer, Jean. Outside of Scandinavia, few will know that Jean’s younger brother, Christian, achieved distinction in a very different…

  • Wilson on the couch: How Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, an American diplomat, came to analyze the American president

    James L. Franklin Chicago, Illinois, United States   Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In December 1966, Houghton Mifflin Company published Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-Eighth President of the United States, A Psychological Study by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt. The curious fact that Sigmund Freud, the…