The History of Mental Symptoms
The History of Mental Symptoms
Looking for an examination copy?
If you are interested in the title for your course we can consider offering an examination copy. To register your interest please contact [email protected] providing details of the course you are teaching.
$261.00
USDSince psychiatry remains a descriptive discipline, it is essential for its practitioners to understand how the language of psychiatry came to be formed. This important book, written by a psychiatrist-historian, traces the genesis of the descriptive categories of psychopathology and examines their interaction with the psychological and philosophical context within which they arose. The author explores particularly the language and ideas that have characterised descriptive psychopathology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. He presents a masterful survey of the history of the main psychiatric symptoms, from the metaphysics of classical antiquity to the operational criteria of today. Tracing the evolution of concepts such as memory, consciousness, will and personality, and of symptoms ranging from catalepsy and aboulia to anxiety and self-harm, this book provides fascinating insights into the subjective nature of mental illness, and into the ideas of British, Continental and American authorities who sought to clarify and define it.
- First volume in the English language to survey the wealth of infomation on this subject
- Provides an international perspective of events
- A vital reference to the origins and precise meanings of descriptive terminology
Reviews & endorsements
"German Berrios's history of descriptive psychopathology, a tour de force of multilingual erudition, surveys the sources, provides a perceptive analysis and offers some broad reflections on the Herculean enterprise of mapping a sea of troubles...he has put us deeply in his debt with a remarkable account of the mappings of the mind through a study that transcends the private technicalities of psychiatry to shed light on the changing representations of the Western psyche itself." Roy Porter, Nature
"...fascinating book on the history of mental symptoms....A very useful, easily read, and coherent book for graduate students and professionals in psychopathology or mental illness studies." Choice
"German Berrios's The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology Since the Nineteenth Century is a brilliant tour de force....Berrios has gone a long way in filling this gap with a major work that speaks not only to historians but also to mental health practitioners and researchers." Joel Braslow, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Product details
April 1996Paperback
9780521437363
584 pages
247 × 175 × 29 mm
1.188kg
12 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Object of Inquiry:
- 1. Matters historical
- 2. Descriptive psychopathology
- Part II. Cognition and Consciousness:
- 3. Disorders of perception
- 4. Thought disorder
- 5. Delusions
- 6. Obsessions and compulsions
- 7. Cognitive impairment: congenital
- 8. Cognitive impairment: acquired
- 9. Memory and its disorders
- 10. Consciousness and its disorders
- Part III. Mood and Emotions:
- 11. Anxiety and cognate disorders
- 12. Affect and its disorders
- 13. The anhedonias
- Part IV. Volition and Action:
- 14. The will and its disorders
- 15. Feelings of fatigue
- 16. Catalepsy, catatonia and stupor
- 17. Tremor, rigidity, akathisia and stereotypy
- Part V. Miscellany:
- 18. Personality and its disorders
- 19. Self-harm.
