You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
We psychoanalysts, as clinical historians of the human personality, should be naturally interested in the historical roots of our own discipline. In the course of our prepsychiatric education and, optimally, of our continued education, we have seen much to indicate that artists, philosophers and others have been preoccupied with mental disorder for thousands of years. Many of our forebears, as keen and insightful observers, have frequently anticipated the findings and writings of Freud and others in psychoanalysis.
In this root-seeking tradition, Simon, who is on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and is evidently a classical Greek scholar as well, has explored what he has subtitled, “The Classical Roots of Modern Psychiatry,” in an instructive and intriguing volume. His erudite exploration seems to be aimed at resolving the ongoing debate on the nature of mental illness and of psychiatry itself. In the two introductory chapters, entitled “On the Babel of Tongues in Contemporary Psychiatry” and “The Development of Models of Mental Illness,” he presents a competent review of current differences of concept and approach in psychiatry ranging from those of Charcot through Freud to Ronald Laing. He clearly believes that tracing concepts to ancient Greek thought will significantly illuminate the problem. What follows is a fascinating parade of hallowed figures from ancient Greece speaking on the distress and pain of the human condition. Not the least portion of the value of this volume is the opportunity to be re-exposed to the truly magnificent literature of ancient Greek civilization and to be vividly reminded of the insights into human behavior presented by such immortal writers as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle.
The book concentrates on three ways of viewing mental phenomena: the poetic, the philosophical, and the medical models. Perhaps a partial answer to the author's quest lies in the fact that by far the larg