Buy a book... 
| Psychiatry. A Very Short Introduction | Buy a book...
|
| Author(s): | T. Burns |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN: | 0192807277 |
| Format: | softback |
| 146pp | |
| Price: | £6.99 |
| Review Date: | 16 September 2006 |
| Review: | In this small format book the author covers what psychiatry is all about. He explains that like all medicine, it is a pragmatic problem-solving activity. It draws on scientific theories but is not derived from them or constrained by them and unlike psychology or physics, psychiatry cannot be explained ‘top-down’ from theories. Psychiatry is an activity which despite the scanners and designer drugs still rests on establishing trusting personal relationships. The author writes with interest and humour, he writes how psychiatry is different and even those working in the field are treated as different; he is often asked half jockingly, whether we become psychiatrists because we are odd or did we become odd as a result of being psychiatrists. Chapters are 1 what is psychiatry? 2 Asylums and the origns of psychiatry, 3 The move into the community, 4 Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, 5 Psychiatry under attack, 6 Open to abuse, 7 Into the 21st century. |