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Eric J. Engstrom, A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry, Social History of Medicine, Volume 19, Issue 1, April 2006, Pages 149–150, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkj009
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Edward Shorter, A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 338. £30.50. ISBN 0–19–517668–5.
Although Uwe Heinrich Peters might justifiably dispute the claim, Edward Shorter's recent book announces itself as the first ever historical dictionary of psychiatry. It is designed not so much for historians as for mental health professionals and general readers who wish to know more about the origins of contemporary psychiatric concepts. According to the author, a dictionary has become necessary because psychiatry is ‘emerging from a period of turmoil’ and the demise of psychoanalysis has resulted in many key concepts and diagnostic traditions becoming ‘unhitched from the continuity of history’ so that they now ‘float in conceptual confusion’ (p. vii). In attempting to dispel this purported confusion, the dictionary's entries are embedded in a framework that emphasises shifts in national dominance (from Britain and France, to Germany, to the USA) and that divides the history of psychiatry into three periods: an asylum period from 1770 to 1870, a psychological and psychoanalytic period from 1870 to 1970, and finally a period of biological psychiatry that continues to the present. Of these three periods, Shorter believes that the first two are largely irrelevant to contemporary psychiatry and hence he focuses most of his attention on the history of the third phase.