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Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent, principled creitical review which informs, guid
Review: Highly intelligent, principled writing. Not opinionated, but has opinions, argues for them, convinces the reader. Informative but does not aequalize between imporatent and unimportant. Brilliant style, most amusing.
Rating: 
Summary: Mind Medicine -- Psychic or Somatic
Review: I loved this book. Terrific. Over and over it tied together and made sense of things that had puzzled me. To get personal: in the fifties, my father spent a small fortune on traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. And it did him a lot of good. For years, I believed Freudian psycyoanalysis was scientific. For one things, it just _had_ to be. No charlatan could go to the effort and expense of getting an MD, then board certification in psychiatry, then undergo psychoanalysis, just in order to con people. Yet in some way that I didn't quite understand, I became aware than nowadays Freudian psychoanalysis is considered to be a pseudoscience, on about the same level as orgone boxes or homeopathy or Christian science. How _could_ my parents have fallen for it? How _could_ the medical community? Well, Shorter explains what happened in a way that makes sense, seems clear, and (to my mind) is really quite sympathetic to the psychoanalytic community and its clients. Along the way he ties up a lot of loose ends. All through the book I kept saying to myself things like, "Oh, so _that's_ what 'neurasthenia' was" (people in novels written early in the century often had it). "Wow, so that's what the word 'degenerate' is really referring to."
Rating:
Summary: Ah, so _that's_ what happened.
Review: I loved this book. Terrific. Over and over it tied together and made sense of things that had puzzled me. To get personal: in the fifties, my father spent a small fortune on traditional Freudian psychoanalysis. And it did him a lot of good. For years, I believed Freudian psycyoanalysis was scientific. For one things, it just _had_ to be. No charlatan could go to the effort and expense of getting an MD, then board certification in psychiatry, then undergo psychoanalysis, just in order to con people. Yet in some way that I didn't quite understand, I became aware than nowadays Freudian psychoanalysis is considered to be a pseudoscience, on about the same level as orgone boxes or homeopathy or Christian science. How _could_ my parents have fallen for it? How _could_ the medical community? Well, Shorter explains what happened in a way that makes sense, seems clear, and (to my mind) is really quite sympathetic to the psychoanalytic community and its clients. Along the way he ties up a lot of loose ends. All through the book I kept saying to myself things like, "Oh, so _that's_ what 'neurasthenia' was" (people in novels written early in the century often had it). "Wow, so that's what the word 'degenerate' is really referring to."
Rating: 
Summary: Shorter's opinion on the history of psychiatry
Review: I really enjoyed the part of this book on the history of psychiatry. Unfortunately only about 60% of the book is on this topic and the rest consists of Shorter's unbalanced opinions. As a Psychiartic Registrar/resident slightly more simpathetic to the Biological approach, even I found this book extremely biased. Shorter's concrete style of reasoning makes him far more suitable to write a book on the history of surgery. The finer nuances and richness of the field of psychiatry is clearly outside his grasp.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Medicine -- Psychic or Somatic
Review: Shorter's book is an important addition to the history of psychiatry. It falls short because of Shorter's "over kill" in his polemic against psychoanalysis. The Freudian perspective needs thoughtful criticism, but Shorter's attacks become carping. Psychoanalysis has made important cultural contributions, and many people have received benefit from the analyst's couch. Good history should have a direction, even a perspective. But Shorter's history would have been better served with a calmer and more balanced voice.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Medicine -- Psychic or Somatic
Review: Shorter's book is an important addition to the history of psychiatry. It falls short because of Shorter's "over kill" in his polemic against psychoanalysis. The Freudian perspective needs thoughtful criticism, but Shorter's attacks become carping. Psychoanalysis has made important cultural contributions, and many people have received benefit from the analyst's couch. Good history should have a direction, even a perspective. But Shorter's history would have been better served with a calmer and more balanced voice.
Rating:
Summary: a one-sided polemic
Review: This book is a one-sided polemic. The author clearly believes that only the "biological" approach to psychiatry is worth anything, but instead of presenting his case as an honest argument, he gives us a weighted, colored, and biased view of history. I was very disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book:The rise, fall and rise of biological psychiatry
Review: This book is a well written acount of the development of psychiatry through the ages. It shows in great detail (sometimes too much, hence only 4 stars) the rise, fall and rise of biological psychiatry. Especially the part of the second rise and the decline of psychoanalysis is a must read for everyone interested in this subject. After reading this book everyone should understand that there is only one side to psychiatry and that is the biological side.
Rating: 
Summary: Psychiatric hagiography
Review: This is an unbalanced, often inaccurate, and entirely adulatory history of psychiatry, masquerading as scholarship. Shorter finally lost me at the point where he describes ice-pick lobotomies, of which he is mildly diapproving, as an "adventure."
Rating:
Summary: Psychiatric hagiography
Review: This is an unbalanced, often inaccurate, and entirely adulatory history of psychiatry, masquerading as scholarship. Shorter finally lost me at the point where he describes ice-pick lobotomies, of which he is mildly diapproving, as an "adventure."
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