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For several decades Carl Binger has been a consistent spokesman for liberalism in medicine, psychiatry, politics, and human affairs. This small volume of essays written between 1945 and 1966 illuminates his views on the relationship of psychiatry and social science to medicine and stresses his vision of a new, more humanistic medicine, informed by psychoanalysis and social awareness. 'The unprocessed reality of our work is no longer the sick patient only but the human animal in his environment.' The essays are addressed to the layman and the 'non-psychiatrist' physician, and they are an excellent introduction to the kind of progressive thinking in medicine that is increasingly influential today.
The author argues forcefully for the central role of psychoanalytically oriented psychiatry in medicine. 'I believe that the principal contribution of psychiatry to medicine lies in its humanizing influence.' It is the duty of psychiatry to reform medicine: 'it is the humanistic dimension that is most important even if it sometimes brings us into conflict with the rest of medicine or perhaps just because it does … As psychiatry and the art of medicine have matured, the doctor is beginning to accept the total responsibility