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.
No review can hope to cover the huge overview of the field provided by these two large volumes. W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, editors and contributors of essays here, are both leaders at the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine in London, England, and have been in the forefront recently of tirelessly expanding the discipline. Although those with an interest in psychoanalytic matters cannot be expected to be concerned with the full
range of the topics covered in these volumes, I will try to point out essays that seemed to me particularly compelling or pertinent.
In Volume I, Arthur Kleinman, who has done outstanding work linking anthropology (especially in China) and psychiatry, has a solid essay on “What Is Specific to Western Medicine?” Arthur L. Caplan contributes a chapter on “The Concepts of Health, Illness, and Disease” as he contrasts the normative with the purely empirical approach. Theodore M. Brown writes on “Mental Diseases,” with a special concern about psychosomatic problems. Roy Porter has a chapter on “Diseases of Civilization,” which includes references to Freud's work as well as to the writings of Wilhelm Reich.
Volume II has pieces also of critical conceptual interest to students of psychoanalysis. Edward Shorter examines a specialty of his, “The History of the Doctor-Patient Relationship.” Sander Gilman discusses “Psychotherapy” with direct attention to the psychoanalytic movement. Jan Goldstein treats “Psychiatry,” which includes reference to 20th-century American responsiveness to psychoanalytic teachings. And Roy Porter's “Religion and Medicine” discusses the ways in which traditional religious beliefs have had a bearing on all issues connected with the state of the soul.
Doubtless, conscientious readers will find even more of interest here for those with a special preoccupation with psychoanalysis. The editors have exhaustively succeeded in their objective of taking stock of the current state of the art and science of medicine.