Abstract
It is said that history happens elsewhere to other people. This ambitious, if not entirely comprehensive, work disproves the point. It covers a period in which most of us have played a part. Familiar names, places and events occur as their paths and ours cross. The disarming preface lists the exclusions, emphasizes selectivity and the thematic and chronological basis while excusing repetition, of which there is plenty. Presentation is handsome and its imaginative organization superb with each decade a devoted chapter preceded by a list of orienting major world events and a matching list of significant events in psychiatry (useful to the historically illiterate) which are then covered in the chapter either as topics or by biography. Each chapter concludes with an impeccably selected list for further reading. There is a great diversity of contributors ranging from a medical student to esoteric historians which guarantees an equal diversity of styles. In some ways this volume is more a collection of introductory essays (e.g. Brown on Janet) and brief biographies while the section on Melanie Klein and Anna Freud reads more like a novel. It provides a satisfying mix even if the range does not always allow for depth.
This is a work which can be read through with benefit or selectively according to the demand of the moment. In that latter regard it is near essential for trainees. Senior colleagues will, no doubt, delight to see their contemporaries honoured and familiar institutions (some long gone) mentioned. With more sour satisfaction they will appreciate the often adverse and even tragic influences of ideology, politics, culture and economics on the development of psychiatry in the last century. The chapters on eugenics, the mental hygiene movement and its dreadful implementation in Nazi Germany and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere are ever ready memories of the frailty and vulnerability of psychiatry and psychiatrists. Of course each of us will be attracted to our own special area of interest but I would urge that you read those chapters and sections covering areas with which you are not familiar for you will find a litany of problems, promises unfulfilled, frustrations and occasional triumphs which transcend theoretical clinical boundaries.
If I had to single out for excellence it would be the first chapter by Turner packed with knowledge, seamlessly presented, and the last section of the last chapteron ‘Psychopharmacology 2000’. Repetition is inevitable with multiple contributors but can be a virtue when it is presented in different contexts which allows the matter to be seen from different viewpoints. Furthermore it is of benefit to the selective reader.
Comparison: the only one I know is Pierre Pichot's smaller volume of the same name covering the period from 1880 to 1980. While covering many of the same themes the author however, learned and experienced, cannot hope to cover the same range and detail as Freeman's large cohort of contributors. The contrast is the illustration of the extraordinary development of and in psychiatry in the last 20 years.
Criticisms: this history centres almost exclusively on European and American psychiatry. At least 50 per cent of the world's population is not mentioned, particularly China and South America. On a minor nationalistic note Cade is not mentioned but to be fair neither is Mogens Schou. Hollingshead and Redlich's seminal ‘Social class and mental illness’ (1958) does not get a mention in the various critiques of psychoanalysis.
This book should not only be read by those who have more to look back on than forward but also by those who are on the threshold of their career in psychiatry.