This book chronicles the conceptual and methodological facets of psychiatry and medical psychology throughout history. There are no recent books covering so wide a time span. Many of the facets covered are pertinent to issues in general medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences today. The divergent emphases and interpretations among some of the contributors point to the necessity for further exploration and analysis.

This book chronicles the conceptual and methodological facets of psychiatry and medical psychology throughout history. Many of these are pertinent to issues in general medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences today. Section One, Periods, chronicles the prehistory and history of the field from embryonic psychiatry (antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment) through the emergence of psychiatry as a medical specialty (romantic or early-19th-century German psychiatry, descriptive psychiatry and psychiatric nosology, psychoanalysis, biological psychiatry, liaison psychiatry, and psychopharmacology). Section Two, Key Topics and Concepts, explores the history of major psychiatric disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, psychosomatic disorders, the influence of neurology of psychiatry, the evolution and transformation of mental institutions, and the psychoanalytic movement in the United States. Section Three, Epilogue, is a philosophical treatment of psychiatry as a medical specialty.Where appropriate, contributors have had access to each other's developing essays and have cooperated with each other and with the editors to minimize redundancy and enhance the book's coherence and integration. The divergent emphases and interpretations among some of the contributors will interest the serious student of history as much as the convergences because the former point to the necessity for further exploration and analysis.