Description
Book SynopsisThis book will be of interest to professionals and students in psychiatry, as well as psychologists, social workers, philosophers, and general readers who are interested in understanding the field of psychiatry and its practices at a conceptual level.
Trade ReviewGhaemi raises dozens of thought-provoking questions in the midst of his tour through the concepts of psychiatry. -- John Z. Sadler, M.D. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 2005 This interesting and well-written volume can both enhance the reader's conceptual approach to understanding psychiatry and assist the reader's avoidance of dogmatism on the one hand and conceptual 'glibness' on the other... A valuable contribution to our literature and an important extension of McHugh and Slavney's 1998 text, The Perspectives of Psychiatry. -- James W. Lomax, M.D. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2004 After the narrow confines of most psychiatric writing, it is refreshing to read an author who can quote knowingly from both Seymour Kety and William James and who can competently discuss topics as diverse as the mind-body problem and the relevance for psychiatry of Epicurus and Sufism. The book is a reminder of the rich banquet of conceptual and philosophical issues that are of relevance to our field but rarely make it into the standard literature. -- Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D. Psychological Medicine 2004 A sensational success when it comes to waking us up from our conceptually impoverished stupors... Ghaemi has given us a book that is not only painfully unusual by today's standards, but so stubbornly and clearly thought out as well. -- Andres Martin, M.D., M.P.H. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry The book is intended for thinking psychiatrists, but thinking patients stand to benefit perhaps even more. -- John McManamy McMan's Depression and Bipolar Weekly 2006 I highly recommend this book to professionals in the mental health field, although others-such as hospital administrators, educators, and the intelligent layperson-may also find it stimulating and thought provoking. -- Victor A. COlotla PsycCRITIQUES 2010 Ghaemi's grasp is wide. His book will be as much disturbing as satisfying but will provide the reader a sense of where our field has been and where it may need to go. -- Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D. American Journal of Psychiatry 2010
Table of ContentsContents: PART I: Theory: What Clinicians Think and Why1. The Status Quo: Dogmatism, the Biopsychosocial Model, and Alternatives 2. What There is: Of Mind and Brain 3. How We Know: Understanding the Mind 4. What is Scientific Method? 5. Reading Karl Jasper's General Psychopathology 6. What Is Scientific Method in Psychiatry 7. Darwin's Dangerous Method: The Essentialist Fallacy 8. What We Value: The Ethics of Psychiatry 9. Desire and Self: Hellenistic and Eastern Approaches PART II: Practice: What Clinicians Do and Why 10. On the Nature of Mental Illness: Disease of Myth? 11. Order out of Chaos? The Evolution of Psychiatric Nosology 12. A Theory of DSM-IV: Ideal Types 13. Dimensions versus Categories 14. The Perils of Belief: Psychosis 15. The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune: Depression 16. Life's Roller Coaster: Mania 17. Being Self-Aware: Insight 18. Psychopharmacology: Calvinism or Hedonism? 19. Truth and Statistics: Problems of Empirical Psychiatry 20. A Climate of Opinion: What Remains of Psychoanalysis 21. Being There: Existential Psychotherapy 22. Beyond Eclecticism: Integrating Psychotherapy and Psychopharmacology PART III: After Eclecticism 23. Bridging the Biology-Psychology Dichotomy: The Hopes of Integrationism 24. Why It Is Hard to Be Pluralist
