Tag: Psychiatry and Psychology
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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…
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Thomas Szasz
JMS PearceHull, England “[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 In a discipline as diverse as medicine, it should occasion no surprise that odd characters, eccentrics, and unorthodox adventurers emerge…
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Vincenzo Chiarugi, who freed the insane from their chains
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, chained to the wall,…
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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…
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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…
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Dancing with spiders: Tarantellas and tarantism
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “There are always hysterical people undergoing extraordinary cures.”– Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man The industrial city of Taranto is in the “heel” of boot-shaped Italy. The Romans called the city Tarentum,1 and part of its historical importance comes from its name. Confusion has also arisen from that name’s overuse. A traditional folk…
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The mystique of psychiatry: a closer look
Lawrence ClimoLincoln, Massachusetts, United States 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 know what is concealed or hidden inside…
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Qualis artifex pereo
Henri Colt Laguna Beach, California, United States 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 eyes that sparkled when he smiled, which was often. Sprawled on his lounge chair every Saturday, he soaked up the…