BOOK

The couch, the clinic, and the scanner : stories from three revolutionary eras of the mind

Hellerstein, David, author

2023

Overview

\"This book traces the history of psychiatry through three revolutionary eras--each exemplified by a different model of the mind--which Columbia psychiatrist David Hellerstein has seen over the course of his decades-long career. Each model was meant to organize the brain's unfathomable complexity in a simplified but compelling way. First, starting at the beginning of the 20th century, came the psychoanalytic model and the accompanying icon of the couch. Until the 1960s and '70s, Freudian psychoanalysts still ruled America; the mind could be liberated through free association, by regression, by interpretation of transference, and by patiently working through neurotic tangles. Then, In January of 1980, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 3rd edition, the DSM-III, was published by the American Psychiatric Press. It was more than three and a half times the length of the DSM-II, with 83 more diagnoses--free of psychoanalytic ideas and seen by psychoanalysts at the time as a take-out menu of diagnoses and treatments. This era ushered in revolutionary new clinical treatments and medications. And then, in the early years of the 21st Century, Hellerstein's third decade of practice, yet another new dream began to emerge. We now find ourselves living in the era of the whole human genome, of \"personalized,\" or what was soon renamed \"precision,\" medicine, and the visualization of \"task-based\" brain center activations by a dazzling array of amazing neuroimaging techniques using MRI and PET scanning machines. Not only that, we are at the first stages of trying to tweak our brains' epigenetics and \"retuning\" aberrant brain circuits by direct current electricity, or profoundly disruptive drug infusions. We are now immersed in a neuroscience revolution in psychiatry. The sixteen stories that make up the book are autobiographical narratives, written from Hellerstein's perspective as a psychiatrist practicing in New York City from the early 1980s to the present day, a physician who spends his time working with patients, doing research, and helping to run clinics and hospitals. He witnessed firsthand these evolutions of the field: from the couch, to the clinic, to the brain scanner. Mindset documents Hellerstein's own internal battles as explorations of the self, full of wonder and angst and occasional surprising new understanding. And of course, Hellerstein's daily adventures center around the innumerable patients a doctor encounters every day, sometimes baffling and frustrating and often inspiring\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Subject: Hellerstein, David. / Psychiatrists New York (State) New York Biography. / Psychiatry New York (State) New York Anecdotes. / Neuropsychiatry New York (State) New York Anecdotes. / Physician and patient Anecdotes.
• ISBN: 9780231207928

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
R154.H337 A3 2023	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE