About the Book

Written by one of the world’s most distinguished historians of psychiatry, Psychiatry and Its Discontents provides a wide-ranging and critical perspective on the profession that dominates the treatment of mental illness. Andrew Scull traces the rise of the field, the midcentury hegemony of psychoanalytic methods, and the paradigm's decline with the ascendance of biological and pharmaceutical approaches to mental illness.

The book's historical sweep is broad, ranging from the age of the asylum to the rise of psychopharmacology and the dubious triumphs of community care. The essays in Psychiatry and Its Discontents provide a vivid and compelling portrait of the recurring crises of legitimacy experienced by "mad-doctors," as psychiatrists were once called, and illustrate the impact of psychiatry’s ideas and interventions on the lives of those afflicted with mental illness.