Category: Psychiatry Psychology
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John E. Fryer, M.D.: A majority of one
Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden Historical marker honoring John Fryer. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2017. Photo by NMGiovannucci on Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. “Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.” – Henry David Thoreau Homosexuality was defined as a psychiatric disorder in 1952, in the first edition of…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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 …
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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,…
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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…