Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: psychotherapy

  • Dictator on the couch: The only known psychological treatment of Adolf Hitler

    Robert M. Kaplan Australia   Top: Hitler in Landsberg Prison common room with (from left) Hess, Herman Kriebel, Fobke and Dr. Friedrich Weber. Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo. Bottom: Landsberg Prison for War Criminals, 1933. Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo / Alamy Stock Photo. It is perhaps not widely known that Adolf Hitler, one of the most…

  • 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…

  • Mindfulness meditation as psychotherapy

    Migel Jayasinghe UK This article was previously published by the author between the years of 2006 and 2018. The original publisher has since been lost and the article edited and republished by Hektoen International staff. Other appearances of this text elsewhere on the internet may be unauthorized.   Art by Tushara Jayasinghe. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is…

  • Counseling

    Migel Jayasinghe  England, UK This article was previously published by the author between the years of 2006 and 2018. The original publisher has since been lost and the article edited and republished by Hektoen International staff. Other appearances of this text elsewhere on the internet may be unauthorized.   Hampstead Heath, 1970 by Jo Brocklehurst. The British…

  • A Tale of Two Tonics: Sino-Western psychopharmaceutical modernity in Shanghai, 1936

    Richard Zhang Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States   Advertisement for Sanatogen in the Shen Bao, October 25, 1936.  Source (accessed through Yale University).  Shanghai, 1936: Positioned at the Yangtze Delta, this sprawling, bustling seaport was a multiplicity of cities. It was China’s most lucrative commercial hub for many business elites; a lavish, cosmopolitan adopted home for expatriates from at…

  • The anatomy of bibliotherapy: How fiction heals, part I

    Dustin Grinnell Boston, Massachusetts, United States Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.—Rudyard Kipling Literature is medicine for the soul In the 1980s, the mother of Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary scholar, was in the hospital, ill and delirious. Seeking to ease her suffering, her father gave her the twenty-five books of…

  • W.H.R. Rivers and the humane treatment of shell shock

    Soleil Shah London, UK   A shell-shocked soldier receives electro-shock treatment from a nurse during the First World War. Image Source: Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine (ref Reeve 041476) via Flickr “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.” – Hippocrates War neurosis, or “shell shock”…

  • Art therapy: a historical perspective

    Mirjana Stojkovic-IvkovicBelgrade, Serbia Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses the creation of art to help resolve psychopathological conflicts. It helps people to identify psychological weaknesses and see problems from a different perspective, enabling them to escape from repetitive self-destructive behavior. Art therapy improves personality, self-image, and self-acceptance, resulting in an improved quality…