The Making of Modern Psychiatry

Ronald Chase

• Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9783832547189
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The field of psychiatry changed dramatically in the latter half of the nineteenth century, largely by embracing science. The transformation was most evident in Germany, where many psychiatrists began to work concurrently in the clinic and the laboratory. Some researchers sought to discover brain correlates of mental illness, while others looked to experimental psychology for insights into mental dynamics. Featured here, are the lives and works of Emil Kraepelin - often considered the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, his teacher Bernhard Gudden, and his anatomist colleague Franz Nissl. The book describes scientific findings together with the methods used; it explains why diagnoses were then (and are still now) so difficult to make; it also explores mind-brain controversies. The Making of Modern Psychiatry will inform and delight mental health professionals as well as all persons curious about the origins of modern psychiatry.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Institutional Reforms
• Cutting Nature at its Joints
• Mind, Brain or Both?
• A New Vision for Psychiatry
• Bernhard Gudden at the Upper Bavarian District Mental Hospital
• The Tragic Deaths of the King and the Professor
• A Mismatched Pair of Rising Stars
• Experimental Psychology
• Kraepelin and Nissl in Heidelberg
• A Very Complex Thing
• Seeing is Believing, or Maybe Not
• Mind-Altering Drugs and Disease-Causing Poisons
• Psychosis
• Dementia praecox
• A Classification for the Twentieth Century
• Nineteenth Century Psychiatry Today and in the Future
• Suggested Readings
• Index