Tag: Psychiatrist

On This Day … 22 September

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People (Deaths)

  • 1988 – Rais Amrohvi, Pakistani psychoanalyst, scholar, and poet (b. 1914).
  • 2012 – Jan Hendrik van den Berg, Dutch psychiatrist and academic (b. 1914).

Rais Amrohvi

Rais Amrohvi (Urdu: رئیس امروہوی‎), whose real name was Syed Muhammad Mehdi (12 September 1914 to 22 September 1988) was a Pakistani scholar, Urdu poet and psychoanalyst and elder brother of Jaun Elia. He was known for his style of qatanigari (quatrain writing). He wrote quatrains for Pakistani newspaper Jang for several decade. He promoted the Urdu language and supported the Urdu-speaking people of Pakistan. His family is regarded as family of poets.

The Sindh Assembly passed The Sind Teaching, Promotion and Use of Sindhi Language Bill, 1972 that created conflict and language violence in the regime of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he wrote his famous poem Urdu ka janaza hai zara dhoom say niklay (It is the funeral of Urdu, carry it out with fanfare). He also intended to translate the Bhagavad Gita into standard Urdu.

Jan Hendrik van den Berg

Jan Hendrik van den Berg (11 June 1914 to 22 September 2012) was a Dutch psychiatrist notable for his work in phenomenological psychotherapy (cf. phenomenology) and metabletics, or “psychology of historical change.” He is the author of numerous articles and books, including A different existence and The changing nature of man.

Between 1933 and 1936, he earned diplomas in primary school and high school education, the latter with a focus on mathematics. He also published papers on entomology. He then entered medical school at Utrecht University specialising in psychiatry and neurology. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1946. One year later, after studying in both France and Switzerland, Dr. Van den Berg was appointed to Head of Department at the psychiatry clinic at Utrecht. At Utrecht, he lectured in psychopathology in the medical school and was also appointed to Professor of Pastoral Psychology in the theology department. In 1954, Dr. van den Berg took a position of Professor of Psychology at Leiden University. Since 1967, he has been a visiting professor at many universities and conducted lecture tours internationally.

Having lived most of his later life in a monumental house at the market in the historical centre of Woudrichem, he died in nearby Gorinchem.

On This Day … 09 September

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People (Deaths)

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (13 April 1901 to 09 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who has been called “the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud”.

Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan’s work has marked the French and international intellectual landscape, having made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory as well as on psychoanalysis itself.

Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts emphasising the philosophical dimension of Freud’s thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work which he would further augment by employing formulae from mathematical logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his followers from the International Psychoanalytic Association. In consequence Lacan went on to establish new psychoanalytic institutions to promote and develop his work which he declared to be a “return to Freud” in opposition to prevalent trends in psychoanalysis collusive of adaptation to social norms.

On This Day … 08 September

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People (Births)

  • 1970 – Nidal Hasan, American soldier, psychiatrist, and mass murderer.

People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – Thomas Szasz, Hungarian-American psychiatrist and academic (b. 1920).

Nidal Hasan

Nidal Malik Hasan (born 08 September 1970) is a former US Army Major convicted of killing 13 people and injuring more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on 05 November 2009. Hasan was a United States Army Medical Corps psychiatrist. He admitted to the shootings at his court-martial in August 2013. A jury panel of 13 officers convicted him of 13 counts of premeditated murder, 32 counts of attempted murder, and unanimously recommended he be dismissed from the service and sentenced to death. Hasan is incarcerated at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas awaiting execution.

During the six years Hasan was a medical intern and resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, colleagues and superiors were concerned about his job performance and comments. Hasan was not married at the time, and was described as socially-isolated, stressed by his work with soldiers, and upset about their accounts of warfare.[9] Two days before the shooting, less than a month before he was due to deploy to Afghanistan, Hasan gave away many of his belongings to a neighbour.

Prior to the shooting, Hasan expressed critical views described by colleagues as “anti-American”. An investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concluded his e-mails with the late Imam Anwar al-Awlaki were related to his authorised professional research and he was not a threat. The FBI, Department of Defence (DoD) and US Senate all conducted investigations after the shootings. The DoD classified the events as “workplace violence”, pending prosecution of Hasan in a court-martial. The Senate released a report describing the mass shooting as “the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001”.

The decision by the Army to not charge Hasan with terrorism is controversial.

Refer to 2009 Fort Hood Shooting.

Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz (15 April 1920 to 08 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism. His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1961) and The Manufacture of Madness (1970) set out some of the arguments most associated with him.

Szasz argued throughout his career that mental illness is a metaphor for human problems in living, and that mental illnesses are not “illnesses” in the sense that physical illnesses are; and that except for a few identifiable brain diseases, there are “neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying DSM diagnoses.”

Szasz maintained throughout his career that he was not anti-psychiatry but rather that he opposed coercive psychiatry. He was a staunch opponent of civil commitment and involuntary psychiatric treatment, but he believed in and practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy between consenting adults.

His views on special treatment followed from libertarian roots, based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others, and he criticized the use of psychiatry in the Western world as well as communist states.

On This Day … 02 September

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People (Births)

  • 1901 – Andreas Embirikos, Greek psychoanalyst and poet (d. 1975).

People (Deaths)

  • 1997 – Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist (b. 1905).

Andreas Embirikos

Andreas Embirikos (02 September 1901 to 03 August 1975) was a Greek surrealist poet and one of the first Greek psychoanalysts.

While he was still a teenager his parents divorced; he started studying at the School of Philosophy of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens, but he decided to move to Lausanne to stay with his mother without graduating from the university.

The following years Embirikos studied a variety of subjects both in France and in the United Kingdom where he studied at King’s College London; however it was in Paris where he decided to study psychanalysis together with René Laforgue and joined the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Viktor Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 to 02 September 1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor.

He was the founder of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy which describes a search for a life meaning as the central human motivational force. Logotherapy is part of existential and humanistic psychology theories.

Logotherapy was recognized as the third school of Viennese Psychotherapy. The first school by Sigmund Freud, and the second school by Alfred Adler.

Frankl published 39 books. The autobiographical Man’s Search for Meaning, a best-selling book, is based on his experiences in various Nazi concentration camps.

On This Day … 01 September

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Events

  • 1939 – Adolf Hitler signs an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people.

People (Births)

  • 1848 – Auguste Forel, Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, and psychiatrist (d. 1931).
  • 1902 – Kazimierz Dąbrowski, Polish psychiatrist and psychologist (d. 1980).
  • 1950 – Phil McGraw, American psychologist, author, and talk show host.

Auguste Forel

Auguste-Henri Forel (01 September 1848 to 27 July 1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and eugenicist, notable for his investigations into the structure of the human brain and that of ants. For example, he is considered a co-founder of the neuron theory.

Forel is also known for his early contributions to sexology and psychology. From 1978 until 2000 Forel’s image appeared on the 1000 Swiss franc banknote.

Kazimierz Dabrowski

Kazimierz Dąbrowski (01 September 1902 to 26 November 1980) was a Polish psychologist, psychiatrist, and physician.

He is best known for his theory of “positive disintegration” as a mechanism in personality development. He was also a poet who used the pen name “Paul Cienin, Paweł Cienin”.

Phil McGraw

Phillip Calvin McGraw (born 01 September 1950), better known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality, author and the host of the television show Dr. Phil. He holds a doctorate in Clinical psychology, though he ceased renewing his license to practice Psychology in 2006.

McGraw rose to fame with appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late 1990s. Oprah Winfrey then helped McGraw launch his own programme, Dr. Phil, in September 2002. The show is formatted as an advice show.

On This Day … 30 August

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People (Births)

Victor Skumin

Victor Andreevich Skumin (born 30 August 1948) is a Russian and Soviet scientist, psychiatrist, philosopher and writer.

After graduating from the Kharkiv National Medical University in 1973, in 1976, he became a psychotherapist in Kiev Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. In 1978, he described a new disease, the Skumin syndrome. He introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion for psychological rehabilitation of cardiosurgical patients (1979).

From 1980 to 1990, he was professor of psychotherapy at the Kharkiv Medical Academy of Post-graduate Education. The main result of his scientific activity was the discovery of the “syndrome of the neurotic phantom of somatic disease” and a “concept of the mental constituent of a chronic somatic disease”.

From 1990 to 1994, Skumin held positions as chaired professor of psychology and pedagogy, and of physical education and Health life at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture. In 1994, he was elected to the post of the President-founder of the World Organisation of Culture of Health (Moscow). In 1995, Skumin became the first editor-in-chief of the journal To Health via Culture. He is known for inventing a popular term “Culture of Health” (1968).

Besides psychiatry and psychology, Skumin writes on healthy lifestyle, yoga, and philosophy. He co-authored series of illustrated books and articles on Agni Yoga, Roerichism, Russian cosmism, transhumanism, and New Age. He wrote books of fiction and lyrics for several songs.

On This Day … 24 August

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People (Births)

  • 1915 – James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon), American psychologist and science fiction author (d. 1987).
  • 1923 – Arthur Jensen, American psychologist and academic (d. 2012).

People (Deaths)

  • 2004 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and academic (b. 1926).

James Tiptree Jr.

Alice Bradley Sheldon (born Alice Hastings Bradley; 24 August 1915 to 19 May 1987) was an American science fiction author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 to her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1977 she also used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Sheldon was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.

She studied for her bachelor of arts degree at American University (1957-1959), going on to achieve a doctorate at George Washington University in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the responses of animals to novel stimuli in differing environments. During this time, she wrote and submitted a few science fiction stories under the name James Tiptree Jr., in order to protect her academic reputation.

Arthur Jensen

Arthur Robert Jensen (24 August 1923 to 22 October 2012) was an American psychologist and writer. He was a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Jensen was known for his work in psychometrics and differential psychology, the study of how and why individuals differ behaviourally from one another.

He was a major proponent of the hereditarian position in the nature and nurture debate, the position that genetics play a significant role in behavioural traits, such as intelligence and personality. He was the author of over 400 scientific papers published in refereed journals and sat on the editorial boards of the scientific journals Intelligence and Personality and Individual Differences.

Jensen was controversial, largely for his conclusions regarding the causes of race-based differences in IQ. A 2019 study found him to be the most controversial intelligence researcher among 55 persons covered.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (08 July 1926 to 24 August 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the “Kübler-Ross model”.

Kübler-Ross was a 2007 inductee into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, was named by Time as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers” of the 20th century and was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying.

On This Day … 23 August

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People (Deaths)

  • 1974 – Roberto Assagioli, Italian psychiatrist and author (b. 1888).
  • 1989 – R. D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist and author (b. 1927).
  • 2013 – William Glasser, American psychiatrist and author (b. 1925).

Roberto Assagioli

Roberto Assagioli (27 February 1888 to 23 August 1974) was an Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology.

Assagioli founded the psychological movement known as psychosynthesis, which is still being developed today by therapists and psychologists, who practice the psychological methods and techniques he developed. His work, expounded in two books and many monographs published as pamphlets, emphasized the possibility of progressive integration, or synthesis, of the personality.

R.D. Laing

Ronald David Laing (07 October 1927 to 23 August 1989), usually cited as R.D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis.

Laing’s views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness, Laing regarded schizophrenia as a theory not a fact. Though associated in the public mind with anti-psychiatry he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left. Laing was portrayed by David Tennant in the 2017 film Mad to Be Normal.

William Glasser

William Glasser (11 May 1925 to 23 August 2013) was an American psychiatrist.

Glasser was the developer of W. Edwards Deming’s workplace ideas, reality therapy and choice theory. His innovations for individual counselling, work environments and school, highlight personal choice, personal responsibility and personal transformation. Glasser positioned himself in opposition to conventional mainstream psychiatrists, who focus instead on classifying psychiatric syndromes as “illnesses” and prescribe psychotropic medications to treat mental disorders.

Based on his wide-ranging and consulting clinical experience, Glasser applied his theories to broader social issues, such as education, management, and marriage, to name a few. As a public advocate, Glasser warned the general public of potential detriments caused by older generations of psychiatry, wedded to traditional diagnosing of patients as having mental illnesses (brain disorders) and prescribing medications. In his view, patients simply act out their unhappiness and lack of meaningful personal connection with important people in their life. Glasser advocated educating the general public about mental health issues; offering, post-modern frameworks for finding and following healthy therapeutic direction.

On This Day … 15 August

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People (Births)

  • 1933 – Stanley Milgram, American social psychologist (d. 1984).
  • 1958 – Simon Baron-Cohen, English-Canadian psychiatrist and author.

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram (15 August 1933 20 December 1984) was an American social psychologist, best known for his controversial experiments on obedience conducted in the 1960s during his professorship at Yale.

Milgram was influenced by the events of the Holocaust, especially the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in developing the experiment. After earning a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University, he taught at Yale, Harvard, and then for most of his career as a professor at the City University of New York Graduate Centre, until his death in 1984.

His small-world experiment, while at Harvard, led researchers to analyse the degree of connectedness, including the six degrees of separation concept. Later in his career, Milgram developed a technique for creating interactive hybrid social agents (called cyranoids), which has since been used to explore aspects of social- and self-perception.

He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of social psychology. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Milgram as the 46th-most-cited psychologist of the 20th century.

Simon Baron-Cohen

Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen FBA FBPsS FMedSci (born 15 August 1958) is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university’s Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College. In 1985, Baron-Cohen formulated the mind-blindness theory of autism, the evidence for which he collated and published in 1995. In 1997, he formulated the foetal sex steroid theory of autism, the key test of which was published in 2015.

He has also made major contributions to the fields of typical cognitive sex differences, autism prevalence and screening, autism genetics, autism neuroimaging, autism and technical ability, and synaesthesia. Baron-Cohen was knighted in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to autistic people.

Book: Dialogical Psychiatry: A Handbook For The Teaching And Practice Of Open Dialogue

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Book Title:

Dialogical Psychiatry: A Handbook For The Teaching And Practice Of Open Dialogue.

Author(s): Russell Razzaque.

Year: 2019.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: Omni House Books.

Type(s): Paperback and Kindle.

Synopsis:

This book is written for all of those who are searching for a more client driven, compassionate and relational approach to mental health services. Consultant Psychiatrist, Professor Russell Razzaque combines his experience as practitioner, trainer and researcher of Open Dialogue in this accessible guide to a more dialogical psychiatry.

Both thoughtful and eminently practical, this book outlines the operational changes and the cultural shift needed to deliver this promising approach which could fundamentally transform the way mental health services are delivered. If you’ve ever wondered what the future of mental health services can, and hopefully will, look like I encourage you to read this book and be inspired to be part of that change.