Contending Professions

Sciences of the Brain and Mind in the United States, 1850-2013

Bibliographic Data

ID4516006
AuthorsAndrew Scull (0000-0002-0768-3700, University of California System, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume28
Issue1
Pages131-161
Publication date2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889714000350
PMID25832573
OpenAlexW1984430471
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited59

ArgumentThis paper examines the intersecting histories of psychiatry and psychology (particularly in its clinical guise) in the United States from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. It suggests that there have been three major shifts in the ideological and intellectual orientation of the "psy complex." The first period sees the dominance of the asylum in the provision of mental health care, with psychology, once it emerges in the early twentieth century, remaining a small enterprise largely operating outside the clinical arena, save for the development of psychometric technology. It is followed, between 1945 and 1980, by the rise of psychoanalytic psychiatry and the emergence of clinical psychology. Finally, the re-emergence of biological psychiatry is closely associated with two major developments: an emphasis that emerges in the late 1970s on rendering the diagnosis of psychiatric illnesses mechanical and predictable; and the long-term effects of the psychopharmacological revolution that began in the early 1950s. This third period has seen a shift the orientation of mainstream psychiatry away from psychotherapy, the end of traditional mental hospitals, and a transformed environment within which clinical psychologists ply their trade

Aesthetics · Ideology · Mainstream · Mental health · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychotherapist · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Neurology and Historical Studies · Psychology