Written by one of the world's most distinguished historians of psychiatry Psychiatry and Its
Discontents provides a wide-ranging and critical perspective on the profession that dominates
the treatment of mental illness. Andrew Scull traces the rise of the field the midcentury
hegemony of psychoanalytic methods and the paradigm's decline with the ascendance of
biological and pharmaceutical approaches to mental illness. The book's historical sweep is
broad ranging from the age of the asylum to the rise of psychopharmacology and the dubious
triumphs of community care. The essays in Psychiatry and Its Discontents provide a vivid and
compelling portrait of the recurring crises of legitimacy experienced by mad-doctors as
psychiatrists were once called and illustrates the impact of psychiatry's ideas and
interventions on the lives of those afflicted with mental illness.
