Healing the Mind

Library Journal

These two books show how far and fast the field of psychiatry has changed in recent times. In Healing the Soul, a comprehensive easy-to-scan survey intended as a student reference, Stone (The Fate of Borderline Patients, Guilford, 1990) chronicles the persons, movements, and events that have contributed to modern psychiatry. Starting with accounts of aberrant behavior in religious texts, he traces the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness from ancient Greece to present times. Culling from sources in philosophy, science, and sociology, he gives increased space to developments since 1900, covering such topics as hospital, forensic, and child psychiatry as well as psychopharmacology, genetics, and psychobiology. Stone not only uncovers obscure writing foreshadowing current trends, but acknowledges contributions from outside North America and includes recent ethnological and cross-cul tural considerations. For most collections. Scull (The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain 1700-1900, Yale Univ., 1993) and his British collaborators focus on the profession of psychiatry in 19th-century Britain. Masters of Bedlam examines the lives and careers of seven "mad-doctors" who, in their writings, research, and political lobbying, were influential in changing the profession from a marginal medical field to a specialty with its own academic training, journals, and professional associations. Though well researched, the format of this work, a series of biographies, assumes a basic background knowledge of historical details. An introductory chapter or appendix (as in Stone's work) outlining pertinent scientific and political developments would give this book wider appeal. For academic libraries and medical history collections.Lucille Boone, San Jose P.L., Cal.

Booknews

A review of the history of psychiatry, describing major trends and profiling influential individuals in the field. Examines the role of religion in the development of psychiatry, and offers sections on the period through the 15th century, the 16th through 19th centuries, 1900-1959, the 1960s, and the 1970s. A final section covering 1980- 1996 looks at trends in areas such as psychoanalysis, hospital psychiatry, biological psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Includes a time line and a chronology. For students. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.