Michael Shepherd is Professor of Epidemiological Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. The founder editor of Psychological Medicine, he is the author of ten books and is general editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Psychiatry, due out next year.
In April 1979 a cover-story in Time Magazine, always a sensitive indicator of American public opinion, was entitled ‘Psychiatry on the Couch’. The verdict was unequivocal, even though expressed in the form of a mock-clinical formulation:
Traditional histories of psychiatry, and those which preface the standard medical textbooks on the subject, are good examples of Whiggish historical writing. The dark ages for madness last until...
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