Psychiatry and Psychology - Hektoen International

Thomas Szasz

March 17, 2023

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

March 9, 2023

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, […]

Henry Cotton: Pulling teeth to cure disease

January 18, 2023

Portrait of Henry Andrews Cotton from Appleton’s Cyclopædia of American Biography, Vol. X, 1924, pages 324–325. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. 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 […]

Christian Sibelius: Finland’s first professor of psychiatry

January 10, 2023

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 […]

Margery Kempe: Medieval visions, delusions, and hallucinations

December 20, 2022

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 […]

The Barbie doll syndrome

September 22, 2022

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden 1959 first edition Barbie doll. Barbie copyright held by Mattel. Barbieologin on Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. Fair use. “In all the years I’ve been a therapist, I’ve yet to meet a girl who likes her body.”1 – Mary Pipher, PhD, clinical psychologist In 1959, the Mattel toy company introduced […]

Dancing with spiders: tarantellas and tarantism

July 5, 2022

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden “There are always hysterical people undergoing extraordinary cures.” – Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man Etching of people dancing the tarantella and playing music as an antidote to a tarantula bite. Wellcome Collection. Public domain. The industrial city of Taranto is in the “heel” of boot-shaped Italy. The Romans called […]

The mystique of psychiatry: a closer look

March 31, 2022

Lawrence Climo Lincoln, Massachusetts, United States Photo by Larry Ayalo on Unsplash As a retired psychiatrist, I have been thinking about the mystique that surrounds our profession. Psychiatrists seem to trigger three provocative associations that set them apart from other physicians. The first, sometimes interpreted as a wish, is that psychiatrists read minds and therefore […]

Qualis artifex pereo

March 16, 2022

Henri Colt Laguna Beach, California, United States Man sitting. Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash. This short story is a work of fiction. Translation: “What an artist the world is losing with me!” — cited by Suctonius, The Twelve Caesars, Nero 49; Loeb ed., 2:177 Michael had jet black hair and sorrowful brown […]

Hypochondria

December 9, 2021

JMS Pearce Hull, England, United Kingdom Figure 1: Cover of Hypochondriasis. A practical treatise by John Hill. Source. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. — […]