In 1895 there was not a single case of dementia praecox reported in the United States. By 1912 there were tens of thousands of people with this diagnosis locked up in asylums, hospitals, and jails. By 1927 it was fading away . How could such a terrible disease be discovered, affect so many lives, and then turn out to be something else? In vivid detail, Richard Noll describes how the discovery of this mysterious disorder gave hope to the overworked asylum doctors that they could at last explain—though they could not cure—the miserable patients surrounding them. The story of dementia praecox, and its eventual replacement by the new concept of schizophrenia, also reveals how asylum physicians fought for their own respectability. If what they were observing was a disease, then this biological reality was amenable to scientific research. In the early twentieth century, dementia praecox was psychiatry’s key into an increasingly science-focused medical profession. But for the moment, nothing could be done to help the sufferers. When the concept of schizophrenia offered a fresh understanding of this disorder, and hope for a cure, psychiatry abandoned the old disease for the new. In this dramatic story of a vanished diagnosis, Noll shows the co-dependency between a disease and the scientific status of the profession that treats it. The ghost of dementia praecox haunts today’s debates about the latest generation of psychiatric disorders.
Richard Noll is Associate Professor of Psychology at DeSales University.
Table of Contents
Contents Introduction 1. The World of the American Alienist, 1896 2. Adolf Meyer Brings Dementia Praecox to America 3. Emil Kraepelin 4. The American Reception of Dementia Praecox and Manic Depressive Insanity, 1896– 1905 5. The Lost Biological Psychiatry 6. The Rise of the Mind Twist Men, 1903– 1913 7. Bayard Taylor Holmes and Radically Rational Treatments 8. The Rise of Schizophrenia in America, 1912– 1927 Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index
What People are Saying About This
E. Fuller Torrey
American Madness is an elegantly written account of American psychiatry in the early twentieth century, which shows that diagnostic wrangling one hundred years ago was just as spirited as DSM revisions today. — E. Fuller Torrey, founder of The Treatment Advocacy Center
Gerald N. Grob
American Madness is a major contribution to both history and psychiatry. Noll discredits the widespread belief that dementia praecox was 'the old name' for schizophrenia, and that schizophrenia has always been a real, unitary, stable, and recognizable disease. Noll's book offers a warning about the dangers involved in creating diagnostic categories that have real effects on peoples' lives. — Gerald N. Grob, author of The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America
