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alfboyreads's review
5.0
this is one of the most comprehensive, well written, and genuinely instructive books about mental illness that i have ever read. scull keeps even the quieter points of psychiatry engaing constantly and condenses an entire history so so well. i have genuinely learnt the most i ever have about psychiatry bar maybe the noonday demon by andrew solomon. it captured the horrors of early 20th century psychiatry without being gratuitous or flashy for the hell of it and balanced that really well with the more modern happenings. a beautiful conclusion with a surprising amount of criticism, without being conspiratorial and staying empathetic. incredible piece of work
11corvus11's review against another edition
I cannot finish this. It is of immense importance and thoroughly well researched. But, about a third of the way through, I am finding that I cannot take the bombardment of horrors that these men enacted on their human patients and animal test subjects. I am left wondering how many men (and now women) still exist with this kind of callous disregard for others or such desperate need to be right that they will torture others rather than admit fault.
It might seem hypocritical for me to not finish, but then recommend this, but I do. I already knew about many of these things, and this book makes you feel it. If you're not familiar with these histories, you should be. I am curious about the rest of the book. I may come back to it another time when my brain is not already on fire.
It might seem hypocritical for me to not finish, but then recommend this, but I do. I already knew about many of these things, and this book makes you feel it. If you're not familiar with these histories, you should be. I am curious about the rest of the book. I may come back to it another time when my brain is not already on fire.
courtney_scott1025's review against another edition
I tried listening to the audiobook. This was just so much, too in depth. No one needs 18 hours of a book.
debdeb123's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.5
organchordsandlightning's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.25
A really excellent look into the troubles that have plagued psychiatry over the past two centuries. I wouldn't recommend it as Baby's First Book on Psychiatry, but the terms themselves are not excessively jargony. Though sometimes the book's divisions seem a little arbitrary (not quite chronological, not quite by psychological area), it was nevertheless a fascinating look as to how the field developed and the faces behind it.
paulataua's review against another edition
3.0
One of the strangest histories of psychiatric practice that I have read. It is so uneven in its approach. The first part dealing with the distant past is just presented as a description of the practices without explanation or educated comment. Having some background in the subject I was able to follow, but I wondered what those without that background might have made of it. Those later sections devoted to psychoanalysis presented a major change in direction for the book. They seemed more interested in Freud’s prostrate problems, the fees being offered for lecture tours, and the films that came out of it, all of which seemed to have little to do with the apparent purpose of the book. I was surprised as much by the lack of discussion on the nature of the psychoanalysis, as I was by the need to mention David O. Selznick’s obsession with sex and amphetamines. The final part on the book dealt with the problems with the DSM and the somewhat failure of the pharmaceutical solution without really doing so with adequate enough depth to do justice to the subject. There are lots of reasons why I would not recommend this history of psychiatric practice, but there are enough gems inside to make it still worth reading for those interested in the subject.