Tag: Psychiatry and Psychology
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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…
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Pavel Ivanovich Jacobi (1841–1913)
Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Pavel Ivanovich Jacobi (1841–1913), largely forgotten and rarely featured in the psychiatric literature, was a Russian socialist who made as great an impact on the treatment of the mentally ill as Jonathan Swift in Dublin, Phillipp Pinel in Revolutionary France, Father William Tuke and his sons in England, and Vincenzo Chiarugi…
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Mental health issues in medical students: The prejudice and the injury
Amairani Gómez RodríguezPuebla, Mexico I had my first panic attack at seventeen. Biochemistry was a total headache; no matter how hard I studied, it was never enough to pass. As a school overachiever, I had never experienced failure. I felt an existential pressure. My supportive family never demanded high marks or my being the top…
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Mrs. Dalloway and shell shock
Cristóbal S. Berry-CabánFort Liberty, North Carolina, United States The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I surpassed those of previous conflicts, as some 8.5 million soldiers died from wounds or disease.1,2 Artillery caused most of the casualties, followed by small arms and poison gas. However, the war’s signature injury became known as shell…
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Psychopathological aspects of the war in Ukraine
Sergei JarginMoscow, Russia Paranoid leaders can remain in positions of great power in nations that lack appropriate checks and balances.1 This is particularly likely in one-party states where mass intimidation and imposed homogeneity of thinking prevail and where everyone conforms with the ruling party. Grave consequences can occur when paranoid and delusional ideas coexist in…
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John E. Fryer, M.D.: A majority of one
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “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 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).1 Because homosexuals could be diagnosed as “mentally ill,” they could be…
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Breaking Bad: A case study of antisocial personality disorders
Jason LiuSan 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 disorders. Both…
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Book review: A History of Insanity and the Asylum
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, UK 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 people with mental illness over the centuries. Although the book is written from a…
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Alfred Adler
JMS PearceHull, 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 neurology at…
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William Sargant
JMS PearceHull, England 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, but William Walters Sargant (1907–1988) was an exception, trained as a physician and famed for physical treatments of mental…