ECT: History of a Psychiatric Controversy

摘要

In this column, I am embarking on what I hope will be a regular feature—namely, interviews with historians of psychiatry about their recently published works. My goal is to introduce readers of Psychiatric Times to some of the new books by these authors. Here, I interview Jonathan Sadowsky, PhD, about his book Electroconvulsive Therapy in America: The Anatomy of a Medical Controversy, published late last year by Routledge. Dr. Sadowsky is the Theodore Castele Professor of Medical History at Case Western Reserve University, where he is also Associate Director of the Master’s Program in Medicine, Society, and Culture. His interests include the history of colonial psychiatry, convulsive therapy and other somatic treatments in psychiatry, race and psychiatry, and the history of psychoanalysis. He is the author of Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness and Colonialism in Southwest Nigeria (University of California Press, 1999) and, more recently, his book on ECT.