The Untold Story of Psychiatry

Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, is the Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Formerly the President of the American Psychiatric Association, in 2000, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. In Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (Little, Brown and Company), Dr. Lieberman shares the fascinating story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and redemption. Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth. In Shrinks, Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudo-science through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late blooming maturity into a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field - from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel -- Shrinks is an urgent call-to-arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.