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.
ShrinkTalk: Reflections and Writings of a Psychiatrist is a new self-published book by Michael Blumenfield, M.D., Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at New York Medical College and Past President of the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. In the introduction, Dr. Blumenfield writes that ShrinkTalk is “a compilation of some of my previous activities in educating the public about mental illness. It includes some columns from the newspaper, Psychiatry Today, that I wrote for Gannett Newspapers in the late 1990s, as well as selected blogs from PsychiatryTalk.com; which I have written over the past several years. In addition, I have included a Q&A section from questions that I answered on the popular website HealthTap.com” (p. xi).
For many in the lay public, shrink is a jocular colloquialism used to refer to mental health professionals. Whereas most psychiatrists would not appreciate being referred to as “shrinks,” which refers to tribes in the Amazon that would shrink the heads of their enemies (banned in the 1930s), mental health professionals do want to be seen as those who shrink the mental health problems of their patients, making them smaller and more manageable. I believe that Blumenfield's intention was to use self-deprecating humor to cut through a potential reader's resistance to reading about mental illness, and for this I applaud his word choice.
Chapter 1, “Psychiatry and Ethics,” gives four case vignettes to illustrate four ethical dilemmas. After each situation is described, Blumenfield offers his recommended therapeutic approach and additional comments. He leaves the reader without answers, however, since these are all “dilemmas” without clear-cut solutions. This mirrors what many
of us experience daily with our patients, albeit usually without potential life-or-death outcomes. In his discussion of mental illness and gun control, he gives his view (“I favor strict gun control”) and reviews