Previous articleNext article FreeS. D. Lamb. Pathologist of the Mind: Adolf Meyer and the Origins of American Psychiatry. xii + 299 pp., figs., index. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. $44.95 (cloth).Hans PolsHans Pols Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAt last, there is a biography of Adolf Meyer, the most influential—and least-known—twentieth-century American psychiatrist. Although both psychiatrists and historians of medicine regularly describe Meyer as pioneering, influential, and even authoritative, very few have attempted to present his ideas cogently or analyze the nature of his influence on American psychiatry. In Pathologist of the Mind, S. D. Lamb presents, with great acumen and historical sensitivity, a detailed and insightful biography of this highly influential but mostly overlooked psychiatrist. She relates how, in 1908, Meyer was appointed professor at the Johns Hopkins University medical school—the first modern medical school in the United States—and director of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic. This clinic was modeled on Emil Kraepelin’s psychiatric clinic in Munich, Germany, which was the world’s leading psychiatric research center around the turn of the twentieth century. Meyer spearheaded initiatives to introduce and apply scientific methods to study mental illness at a time when most psychiatrists resided in overcrowded lunatic asylums filled with seemingly hopelessly ill individuals with severe and persistent forms of mental illness. These asylums offered few opportunities for treatment, and the physicians working in these facilities did not harbor any expectations about its possible effect. Research was undertaken by only a few enthusiasts whose interest was limited to dissecting the brains of deceased patients, which, not surprisingly, had no effect on patient care. After migrating to the United States in 1892, Meyer aspired to change all that—and with great success. He aimed to turn the Phipps Clinic into a leading center for psychiatric care, research, and medical teaching, in the hope that it would eventually initiate reforms in the care of mentally ill individuals.It is a rather puzzling predicament that this pioneering psychiatrist, who aimed to make psychiatry scientific, is now almost entirely forgotten by American psychiatrists who are continuously preoccupied with making their discipline scientific. Even more puzzling is that historians of psychiatry have paid little attention to Meyer and the reforms he initiated. Lamb provides several reasons for the lack of interest in Meyer. First of all, Meyer wrote in an unusually impenetrable style of Swiss-German English. Second, his influence on psychiatric research and mental health care has been so decisive that most of his innovations have been taken for granted for decades. This biography, Lamb acknowledges, only provides a beginning in exploring Meyer’s ideas, career, and influence because it spans only the years from 1892 to 1917, which includes Meyer’s early career in the United States as well as the planning and first years of the Phipps Clinic. Rather than merely relying on Meyer’s impenetrable prose, Lamb has analyzed the patient records of the Phipps Clinic from 1913 to 1917, the first four years it received patients. She was the first scholar to gain access to these records, and they provide an invaluable perspective on the way Meyer’s clinic was organized and its everyday operations. On the basis of these patient records, other accounts of the Phipps Clinic, Meyer’s writings, and the innovations he was able to realize in patient care, record-keeping practices, and research activities, Lamb sketches a convincing and thorough account of Meyer as a gifted organizer and an empathic psychiatrist with an unusual acumen for understanding patients. His approach was, first of all, pragmatic; he remained opposed to grand theories and overarching interpretations. For example, he aided the reception of psychoanalysis and selectively incorporated elements of Sigmund Freud’s thinking in his own approach yet resisted the bolder claims his adherents made in the 1930s. He did the same with neurological approaches to mental illness.Lamb’s intellectual and professional biography will inevitably stimulate further historical research on Adolf Meyer’s influence on American psychiatry. It signals a start to future historical research that will surpass earlier approaches that emphasized either psychoanalysis or the development of somatic treatment methods in psychiatry. Ideally, Meyer’s resolute refusal to opt for either of these approaches and his pragmatic attitude, which allowed him to incorporate whatever was useful in either approach, will be reflected in future historical research on the history of American psychiatry. Notes Hans Pols is Associate Professor in the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is interested in the history of medicine, in particular psychiatry. His recent research has focused on the history of medicine in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 108, Number 1March 2017 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690788 © 2017 by The History of Science Society. 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