Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Psychiatry Psychology

  • 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…

  • Margery Kempe: Medieval visions, delusions, and hallucinations

    Margery Kempe (c. 1393 – after 1438) was an English Christian mystic who dictated autobiographic notes to a scribe. Married when twenty years old, she had a postpartum psychotic episode after the birth of her first child and went through at least fourteen subsequent pregnancies. Psychotic symptoms, delusions, and hallucinations continued all her life. She had…

  • It’s not the patient who hit you…

    JP SutherlandNorth America Although Christopher’s appearance was extraordinary, there was no sign (not even in retrospect) that he would kick me in the groin within the next hour. He was naked, and standing motionless with his arms held out perpendicularly from his sides. If anyone tried to cover him with a blanket then he would…