Pills replaced the couch; neuroscience took the place of talk therapy; and as psychoanalysis faded from the scene, so did the castrating mothers and hysteric spinsters of Freudian theory. Or so the story goes. In Prozac on the Couch , psychiatrist Jonathan Michel Metzl boldly challenges recent psychiatric history, showing that there’s a lot of Dr. Freud encapsulated in late-twentieth-century psychotropic medications. Providing a cultural history of treatments for depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses through a look at the professional and popular reception of three “wonder drugs”—Miltown, Valium, and Prozac—Metzl explains the surprising ways Freudian gender categories and popular gender roles have shaped understandings of these drugs. Prozac on the Couch traces the notion of “pills for everyday worries” from the 1950s to the early twenty-first century, through psychiatric and medical journals, popular magazine articles, pharmaceutical advertisements, and popular autobiographical "Prozac narratives.” Metzl shows how clinical and popular talk about these medications often reproduces all the cultural and social baggage associated with psychoanalytic paradigms—whether in a 1956 Cosmopolitan article about research into tranquilizers to “cure” frigid women; a 1970s American Journal of Psychiatry ad introducing Jan, a lesbian who “needs” Valium to find a man; or Peter Kramer’s description of how his patient “Mrs. Prozac” meets her husband after beginning treatment. Prozac on the Couch locates the origins of psychiatry’s “biological revolution” not in the Valiumania of the 1970s but in American popular culture of the 1950s. It was in the 1950s, Metzl points out, that traditional psychoanalysis had the most sway over the American imagination. As the number of Miltown prescriptions soared (reaching 35 million, or nearly one per second, in 1957), advertisements featuring uncertain brides and unfaithful wives miraculously cured by the “new” psychiatric medicines filled popular magazines. Metzl writes without nostalgia for the bygone days of Freudian psychoanalysis and without contempt for psychotropic drugs, which he himself regularly prescribes to his patients. What he urges is an increased self-awareness within the psychiatric community of the ways that Freudian ideas about gender are entangled in Prozac and each new generation of wonder drugs. He encourages, too, an understanding of how ideas about psychotropic medications have suffused popular culture and profoundly altered the relationship between doctors and patients.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Introduction -- PART ONE: THRILLS -- I Funfairs and Thrills -- II Philobatism and Ocnophilia -- III Object Relationships and Anxieties -- IV Aggressivity and Auto-erotism -- V Love and Hate -- VI Reality Testing -- PART TWO: REGRESSIONS -- VII Object and Subject -- VIII Flying Dreams and the Dream Screen -- IX The Chronology of Ocnophilia and Philobatism -- X Progression for the Sake of Regression -- XI Regression in the Analytic Situation -- XII The Ocnophilic and Philobatic Bias of our Theory and Technique -- PART THREE: APPENDIX -- XIII Notes on Some Kindred Topics -- (1) Data on the History of Physical Thrills -- (2) Sublimation and Art -- (3) The Healing Power of Pure Water and Air -- (4) The Psychology of Motility -- (5) Water, Sand, and Words -- (6) The Three-act Drama in Sexuality -- (7) Pre-visual Material of Fantasy -- XIV Distance in Space and Time -- PART FOUR: CONCLUSIONS -- Conclusions -- Index

To abuse or neglect a child, to deprive the child of his or her own identity and ability to experience joy in life, is to commit soul murder. Soul murder is the perpetration of brutal or subtle acts against children that result in their emotional bondage to the abuser and, finally, in their psychic and spiritual annihilation. In this compelling, disturbing, and superbly readable book, Dr. Leonard Shengold, clinical professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, explores the devastating psychological effects of this trauma inflicted on a shocking number of children. Drawing on a lifetime of clinical experience and wide-ranging reading in world literature, Dr. Shengold examines the ravages of soul murder in the adult lives of his patients as well as in the lives and works of such seminal writers as George Orwell, Dickens, Chekhov, and Kipling. One hopeful note in this saga of pain is that a terrible childhood can, if survived, be a source of strength, as Dr. Shengold finds in the cases of Dickens and Orwell. Provocatively original in its approach to literature and psychology, unsettling in its vivid portrayal of the darker side of human nature, far-reaching in its conclusions, Soul Murder will stand alongside such works as Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child as one of the most important studies of the psyche to appear in decades.

""The Medical Man and the Witch During the Renaissance"" by Gregory Zilboorg is a historical account of the relationship between medicine and witchcraft during the Renaissance period. The book explores how medical professionals, such as physicians and surgeons, interacted with individuals accused of practicing witchcraft and the role they played in the persecution of witches. Zilboorg delves into the cultural and social context of the time, examining the beliefs and superstitions that shaped the attitudes towards witches and the methods used to diagnose and treat supposed witchcraft. The book also examines the impact of the witch trials on the medical profession and the development of medical knowledge during this period. Overall, ""The Medical Man and the Witch During the Renaissance"" provides a fascinating insight into the intersection of medicine and witchcraft during a tumultuous period in European history.Publications Of Institute Of The History Of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Third Series, V2.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Book by

hardcover with light blue dust jacket

Wilhelm Stekel was a pioneering psychoanalyst whose prodigious intuition and medical skill, permitted him to compile, study, and interpret the case histories of thousands of patients. He was in a hurry: Cataclysmic World War II events were besetting him, and a grave illness he well understood was hewing at his gaunt, proud figure. Calmly, but with intense speed, he prepared his record, the culmination of which can be seen within this text. Diligently organised and reproduced by Emil A. Gutheil, this fascinating autobiography of the seminal Austrian psychologist is a must-read for anyone interested in the development of psychoanalysis. Chapters include: "Childhood", "University Days", "Practising Medicine", "Introduction to Freud and Psychoanalysis", "The Break with Freud", "Practising Psychoanalysis", "A Trip to America", "Travel on The Continent", etcetera. Wilhelm Stekel (1868 - 1940) was an Austrian psychologist and physician. He was an early follower of the seminal Sigmund Freud, often described as Freud's most distinguished pupil and commonly hailed as one of the founding fathers of modern psychoanalytical methodology. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.