The fascinating story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and
redemption, by the former President of the American Psychiatric
Association.
Psychiatry has come a long way since the days
of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish
marvels before a gaping public.
But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD,
reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening book, the path to
legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but
smooth.
In Shrinks, Dr. Lieberman traces the field from
its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult
of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity -- beginning after World War
II -- as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating
case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field - from Sigmund
Freud to Eric Kandel -- Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating
read, and an urgent call-to- arms to dispel the stigma of mental
illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of
mind.