Search Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »
My library | Help | Advanced Book Search | Web History | Sign in

Books

The creation of psychopharmacology

Front Cover
3 Reviews
Harvard University Press, 2002 - Psychology - 469 pages

David Healy follows his widely praised study, The Antidepressant Era, with an even more ambitious and dramatic story: the discovery and development of antipsychotic medication. Healy argues that the discovery of chlorpromazine (more generally known as Thorazine) is as significant in the history of medicine as the discovery of penicillin, reminding readers of the worldwide prevalence of insanity within living memory.

But Healy tells not of the triumph of science but of a stream of fruitful accidents, of technological discovery leading neuroscientific research, of fierce professional competition and the backlash of the antipsychiatry movement of the 1960s. A chemical treatment was developed for one purpose, and as long as some theoretical rationale could be found, doctors administered it to the insane patients in their care to see if it would help. Sometimes it did, dramatically. Why these treatments worked, Healy argues provocatively, was, and often still is, a mystery. Nonetheless, such discoveries made and unmade academic reputations and inspired intense politicking for the Nobel Prize.

Once pharmaceutical companies recognized the commercial potential of antipsychotic medications, financial as well as clinical pressures drove the development of ever more aggressively marketed medications. With verve and immense learning, Healy tells a story with surprising implications in a book that will become the leading scholarly work on its compelling subject.

  

What people are saying - Write a review

Review: The Creation of Psychopharmacology

User Review  - Michael Burnam-fink - Goodreads

This is a massive book which straddles an uneasy line between scholarly and popular. Deeply researched, Heely draws from some high-level theory to try and explain the transformation in psychiatric ... Read full review

Review: The Creation of Psychopharmacology

User Review  - Beth - Goodreads

This book draws together most of the major threads in the histories of psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and drug development. One of the best histories I have read recently. Read full review

Related books

Contents

Introduction
1
Strangers in a Strange Land
9
The Doctoring of Madness before Chlorpromazine
37
Explorations in a New World
76
Psychiatry outside the Walls
129
Twisted Thoughts and Twisted Molecules
178
Positive and Negative
225
The Sorcerers Apprentice
276
Democracy
334
Notes
391
Acknowledgments
447
Index
449
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

References to this book

From other books

MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know
Law and Nature
Law and Nature
David Delaney
Limited preview - 2003
All Book Search results »

From Google Scholar

Search for a common mechanism of mood stabilizers
Adrian J Harwood, Galila Agam - 2003 - Biochemical Pharmacology
Interface between authorship, industry and science in the domain ...
DAVID HEALY, DINAH CATTELL - 2003 - The British Journal of Psychiatry
Cognitive Therapy for Schizophrenia.
DAVID KINGDON, SHANAYA RATHOD, PETER WEIDEN, DOUGLAS TURKINGTON - 2008 - Journal of Psychiatric Practice
Shaping the Intimate: : Influences on the Experience of Everyday ...
David Healy - 2004 - Social Studies of Science
All Scholar search results »

References from web pages

The Creation of Psychopharmacology -- Weiden 53 (12): 1639 ...
I had a very mixed reaction to The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Certain parts of the book are wonderful. The history of antipsychotics is covered in ...
www.psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/ cgi/ content/ full/ 53/ 12/ 1639

The Creation of Psychopharmacology
Whether we agree with this or not, The Creation of Psychopharmacology is one of the most original and thought-provoking commentaries on culture and ...
www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ articlerender.fcgi?artid=1279263

The Creation of Psychopharmacology - Nature Medicine
The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Reviewed by: Reviewed by Philip Seeman. Departments of Pharmacology and Psychiatry University of Toronto Toronto, ...
www.nature.com/ nm/ journal/ v8/ n11/ full/ nm1102-1194.html

David Healy, <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Creation of ...
David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge, Mass.:. Harvard University Press, 2002. Pp. 469. US$39.95 HB. By Hans Pols ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ V61511U724M47384.pdf

The Creation of Psychopharmacology: By David Healy -- Beveridge ...
The Creation of Psychopharmacology. By David Healy. Allan Beveridge, Consultant Psychiatrist. Queen Margaret Hospital, Whitefield Road, Dunfermline KYI2 0SU ...
bjp.rcpsych.org/ cgi/ content/ full/ 182/ 2/ 177

<I>The Creation of Psychopharmacology</I> by David Healy - drugs ...
The Creation of Psychopharmacology by David Healy, Harvard, $39. 95, ISBN 0674006194 IT USED to be all repressed urges or childhood abuse. Now, the root.
www.newscientist.com/ channel/ being-human/ drugs-alcohol/ mg17323365.600

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease - Fulltext: Volume 190 ...
The Creation of Psychopharmacology confirms that, as a founding historian of psychopharmacology, Healy meticulously gathers information, carefully critiques ...
www.jonmd.com/ pt/ re/ jnmd/ fulltext.00005053-200212000-00009.htm;jsessionid=G8RL4rhxjvYnZTxqv0TyKhsG5dQhjnnBZQ16kSQGx9...

David Healy. The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge, MA ...
The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Press, 2002. 469 pp. $39.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-674-00619-4. In this thought-provoking, ...
doi.wiley.com/ 10.1002/ jhbs.20012

ingentaconnect The Creation of Psychopharmacology
The Creation of Psychopharmacology. The Creation of Psychopharmacology David Healy , Cambridge, Mass., and London : Harvard University Press , 2002 . 469 . ...
www.ingentaconnect.com/ content/ oup/ sochis/ 2003/ 00000016/ 00000003/ art00535;jsessionid=2bqipmiid80ro.alice?format=print

The creation of psychopharmacology | Living Crazy
The creation of psychopharmacology. Publication Type, Book. Year of Publication, 2002. Authors, Healy, D. City, Cambridge, Mass. ...
livecrazy.org/ reference/ the-creation-of-psychopharmacology

About the author (2002)

David Healy is Reader in Psychological Medicine at the University of Wales College of Medicine.

Bibliographic information