Tag: Psychiatry and Psychology
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The tenuous gut-brain axis and its role in schizophrenia
When the son of the American surgeon Bayard Holmes developed schizophrenia, Holmes devoted his life to researching the disease. In 1916, impressed by the new germ theory that stated many diseases were caused by an overgrowth of bacteria, he tried to cure his son by opening his abdomen and going through the appendix to wash…
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Promoting early 20th century American eugenics under the guise of science
Joseph LockhartSaty Satya-MurtiCalifornia, United States Few adherents of pseudoscientific beliefs have wreaked as much societal and human damage as did the eugenicists during the first half of the 20th century. In America, these beliefs led to large-scale sterilization, immigration controls with flimsy rationales,1 and support of racist education and funding.2 Worldwide, they set the stage…
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Geel, Belgium: 700 years of caring for mentally ill people
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Geel, Belgium is a city of about 40,000 inhabitants, in the Flemish province of Antwerp. It contains a university, and a branch of the esteemed Catholic University of Louvain, and a pharmaceutical plant. Geel may be best known for its centuries-long history of providing care for mentally disturbed individuals. The origin of…
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Living behind a mask (Is it being one’s self?)
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States In my retirement in Lincoln, I have found myself looking back at life. Those memories brought me smiles, but that is not what I want to share now. It is the memories that did not bring smiles. It is the memories of embarrassment and remorse after regretful behavior. And because…
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Book review: Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “A nation that produced Goethe could not possibly go to the bad.”– Sigmund Freud, 1930 In March 1938, Austria became part of the Greater German Reich. Nazi antisemitism and the exclusion of Jews from society began at once. Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the creator of psychoanalysis, could no longer deny what was…
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The enigma of mass psychogenic phenomena
Umut AkovaAtlanta, Georgia, United States In the stifling heat of 1518, Strasbourg, France was gripped by a bizarre spectacle: a mass outbreak of uncontrollable dancing. In the city’s streets, men, women, and children danced wildly, their movements frantic and seemingly without purpose. Despite efforts to stop the madness, the frenzy continued unabated, with fear and…
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Caring for the mentally ill: The cycle repeats itself
Robert BiggarBethesda, Maryland, United States A traveler driving through Weston, a small community in the hills of West Virginia, will find it typical of the hundreds of similar bypassed towns: pleasant but a bit run-down and sliding into poverty and abandonment. However, it has one spectacular and historic monument that lies just off the highway:…
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Important figures in the history of neuropsychiatry
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel The life of William Alwyn Lishman (1931–2021) was dedicated to neuropsychiatry.1-2 His classic textbook, Organic Psychiatry (1978), is a foundational book for neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and physiatrists. Lishman was the first UK professor of neuropsychiatry whose “abiding message was that neuropsychiatry was not a subspecialty but the whole of psychiatry—biopsychosocial—with the…
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The Truman delusion: All the world’s a stage
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players”– William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7“You know you’ve made it when you have a disease named after you.”– Andrew Niccol, writer of The Truman Show Movies may influence people in unexpected ways. An example…
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France’s most notorious serial killer
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “This Frenchman comes to the assistance of foreign Jews he does not even know.”– Eryane Kahan, a Romanian Jew living in Paris, at Petiot’s trial “He lured the desperate, the frightened…to his lair…and murdered them.”– Pierre Véron, a plaintiff’s attorney at Petiot’s trial In March 1944, in the 16th arondissement of Nazi-occupied…