About this ebook
Opening a timely debate, considering both the continuing relevance and the inherent limitations of the psychoanalytic approach, the book demonstrates how psychoanalysts reinterpreted their professional identity by formalizing and disseminating knowledge among their fellow practitioners, while negotiating with neighboring professions in the medical fields, such as psychiatry, pharmacology and the burgeoning neurosciences. Chapters explore the ways in which psychoanalysts constructed – and also transgressed upon – the boundaries of their professional identity and practice as they sought to understand schizophrenia and treat its patients. The book argues that among the many relationships psychoanalysis sustained with psychiatry, some weakened their own social role as service providers, while others made the theory and practice of psychoanalysis a viable contender in the jurisdictional struggles between professions.
Psychosis, Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry in Postwar USA
will appeal to researchers, academics, graduate students and advanced undergraduates who are interested in the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, the medical humanities and the history of science and ideas. It will also be of interest to clinicians, health care professionals and other practitioners.About the author
Orna Ophir is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Humanities at the School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Doctoral Studies Program in Clinical Psychology at Long Island University, New York, USA. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in Tel Aviv, Israel, and a licensed psychoanalyst in New York, USA.
