Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature and Meaning of Psychiatry

(Paperback)

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Psychiatry is a battleground, criticised on the one hand as an instrument of social control, while on the other as offering lasting solutions to mental illness. Which of these contrasting positions should we believe What is the truth about psychiatry In this deeply thoughtful, descriptive and sympathetic book, Tom Burns reviews the historical development of psychiatry. What he reveals is that mental illnesses are intimately tied to that which makes us human in the first place and have always followed us. The drive to relieve the suffering they cause is even more human. Psychiatry, for all its flaws, currently represents our best attempts to discharge this most human of impulses. It is not something we can just ignore or decide to leave. It is our necessary shadow.

Reviews

Superbly clear history of psychiatry ... -- Bryan Appleyard, Pick of the Paperbacks * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

Tom Burns is Professor of Social Psychiatry at Oxford University. From the late 1980s he has conducted research, in addition his clinical and teaching work, and has produced nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles. His work into Assertive Community Treatment care for severe psychosis, home based care for general psychiatry, and services to help patients with schizophrenia return to work, has been internationally important. He is currently researching a number of aspects of the doctor-patient relationship, especially those which are experienced as unequal or coercive.