The Psychiatric Patient in America

Abstract

This paper is based on a year's psychotherapeutic experience during 1950–51 in a well-known psychiatric clinic in America.The psychiatric patient in the United States, like his brother and sister elsewhere, may be regarded from one viewpoint as a product of his culture. It has been said that the American scene is compounded of an unorganized mass of atypicalities; but, in fact, certain broad cultural trends are discernible. A brief look at the background of social and family patterns will help to give some insight into the psychic apparatus of the sick as well as the healthy person.

The Endurance of Uncertainty: Antisociality and Ontological Anarchy in British Psychiatry, 1950–2010

“…A prominent critic of psychoanalysis, Eysenck judged this tradition to have a poor scientific basis (Baruch and Treacher 1978; e.g., Eysenck 1953). His views on personality and its pathologies thus stood in stark contrast to the psychoanalytic model(s) through which many U.S. psychiatrists understood the development of mental disorder (Sclare 1953). 6 …”

“…A prominent critic of psychoanalysis, Eysenck judged this tradition to have a poor scientific basis (Baruch and Treacher 1978; e.g., Eysenck 1953). His views on personality and its pathologies thus stood in stark contrast to the psychoanalytic model(s) through which many U.S. psychiatrists understood the development of mental disorder (Sclare 1953). 6 The influence of Eysenck's personality psychology was felt strongly within midtwentieth-century British psychiatry and psychology (Rafter 2006), and it informed much research into psychopathy.…”