Our Necessary Shadow: The Nature And Meaning Of Psychiatry

Description

In this deeply thoughtful, descriptive and sympathetic book, Tom Burns reviews the historical development of psychiatry. What he reveals is that mental illnesses are intimately tied to that which makes us human in the first place and have always followed us. The drive to relieve the suffering they cause is even more human. Psychiatry, for all its flaws, currently represents our best attempts to discharge this most human of impulses. It is not something we can just ignore or decide to leave. It is our necessary shadow.

Author description

Tom Burns is Professor of Social Psychiatry at Oxford University. From the late 1980s he has conducted research, in addition his clinical and teaching work, and has produced nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles. His work into Assertive Community Treatment care for severe psychosis, home based care for general psychiatry, and services to help patients with schizophrenia return to work, has been internationally important. He is currently researching a number of aspects of the doctor-patient relationship, especially those which are experienced as unequal or coercive.