Pathologist of the Mind: Adolf Meyer and the Origins of American Psychiatry

Fortunately for anyone wishing to learn about Meyer''s ideas and their influence, Lamb, a historian, has mined his unpublished papers and correspondence for the truths that became opaque when he turned them into essays. Crucially, she has also read more than 1,800 of the meticulous patient records that Meyer and his staff created at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, which reveal him at work as a clinician and teacher. These she presents as the key to understanding how he created an American psychiatry with his ideas at its center. The result is a tutorial in Meyer''s psychobiology, and a fascinating look at patients'' experiences, their suffering, and treatment in the early 20th century.
—PsycCRITIQUES In this fascinating study, Lamb examines Meyer''s efforts to establish psychiatry as a clinical science and subdiscipline of biology . . . This book is a medical historian''s dream.
—Choice Full of interesting information on how Dr. Adolf Meyer, a Swiss neurologist and psychiatrist, set the basis for modern psychiatry in the United States.
—Metapsychology [Lamb] aims to give us a more detailed and rounded portrait of Meyer''s life and career.
—Times Literary Supplement Some books are worth underlining every sentence. Pathologist of the Mind is one of them.
—Psychiatric Services Lamb’s intellectual and professional biography will inevitably stimulate further historical research on Adolf Meyer’s influence on American psychiatry.
—Isis Pathologist of the Mind clarifies Meyerian notions of psychobiology, psychotherapy, and evolutionary theory (among others) and places this important figure, as well as the hospital and area of specialty to which he was dedicated, into historical context. In impressively detailed fashion, the book brings the man and the era to life.
—Cheiron Book Prize Citation [D]eeply researched, judiciously argued and succeeds in making he nature of Meyer''s contribution more intelligible.
—Social History of Medicine Lamb successfully revives and humanizes Meyer as a meaningful character in the unfolding drama of American psychiatry.
—History of Psychiatry Lamb''s descriptions of patient-staff enounters offer insights not generally found in traditional histories.
—Bulletin of the History of Medicine The first historian ever granted access to these exceptional medical records, Lamb offers a compelling new perspective on the integral but misunderstood legacy of Adolf Meyer.

• | Author: S. D. Lamb
• | Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• | Publication Date: Jan 15, 2015
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781421414843
• | ISBN-10: 1421414848