Book Review: Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Mueller (eds), Transnational Psychiatries: Social and Cultural Histories of Psychiatry in Comparative Perspective c. 1800-2000 (Catharine Coleborne)

Abstract

Book Review - Transnational Psychiatries is a welcome addition to the serious stable of edited book collections about the diverse and connected worlds of psychiatry of the past. Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Mueller developed this book as a project, with the authors first holding an exciting symposium at Southampton in 2005, and then working with separate contributors to produce an interesting book which sets out to extend existing understandings of the histories of psychiatry in a comparative context. The use of the term ‘psychiatries’ is important here, because these contributions address a much broader set of concerns about the field of psychiatric treatment and the cross-fertilization of the psychiatric profession than many previous collections which mostly – but not exclusively – focus on institutionalization. Therefore, the book has much to offer colleagues and researchers in that it seeks to bring new perspectives to the established field, but it also contains impressive and richly researched single contributions.