The Psychiatrists

Although written by a professor of politics, this book is about American psychiatrists and analysts. It describes two different 'tribes' of doctors: analysts, more highly selected, earning more money and seeing fewer patients, who are individually more important and more influential, and general practitioners, working in mental hospitals and centres and seemingly regarded as an inferior breed. Politically both Sroups incline to the Left, but the analysts incline much further. The most interesting parts of the b?ok are the long verbatim extracts in which doctors discuss the difficulties of their work. There appears be a sense of guilt and dis-illusionment amongst the analysts, who seem to be generally under attack from those favouring physical treatments and behaviour therapy ?n the one hand and from e9alitarian demands for fairer distribution of psychiatric skills on the other. The last chapter of the book discusses the future of American Psychiatry which appears to be w?rking towards a system similar to that found in England; analysts "scorning teachers ana trainers and a larger number of general psychiatrists coming into the community. The rivalries between mental hospital and general hospital (mental health centre), already apparent in England, seem about to ?9in in the U.S.A. Fringe psychiatric methods-especially sensi-tlv'ty training at the Esalen Institute ""are discussed in disproportionate detaj|. As a whole the book is a revealing portrait of a very unsettled introverted profession, increasingly valued externally, but at the same time, increasingly divergent about the directions in which it wants to proceed.