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American Psychopharmacology: Second Class Status?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

William S. Appleton
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Address: Massachusetts Mental Health Center, 74 Fenwood Road, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115
Ching-Piao Chien
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School. Staff Psychiatrist, Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan (on leave)

Extract

In the July 1964 issue of The Atlantic, William Sargant (6), made some controversial comments on American psychiatry. “Freudian converts”, he said, fear “allowing any other methods of psychiatric treatment to gain any real recognition and acceptance in … teaching centers” where physical and biochemical treatments are “dismissed” as “symptomatic” and “second-rate”. He argued, furthermore, that psychoanalysts' views are unrealistic because these practitioners are experienced merely with the “very mildest forms of mental illness”. “Only psychoanalysis holds out any real hope in treatment” is the credo which Dr. Sargant attributes to U.S. psychoanalysts. If these opinions were solely those of one author, they might be overlooked, but they are held by many European and American psychiatrists (1).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1967 

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References

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