Anne Harrington is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science and faculty dean of Pforzheimer House at Harvard University. She is the author of four books, including Mind Fixers and The Cure Within. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Anne Harrington has written a lucid and compelling analysis of the travails of psychiatry as it has attempted to ground its understanding of mental illness in biology. She confronts the gaps between its aspirations and reality with fairness and even sympathy.--Steven E. Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research A fascinating and wide-ranging unpacking of the field. Anyone interested in mental health care's history and future will appreciate this informative and rewarding survey. A must-read that will interest general readers and medical professionals alike. A measured, insightful survey of the limits of contemporary treatment for mental illness. A tale of promising roads that turned out to be dead ends, of treatments that seemed miraculous in their day but barbaric in retrospect, of public-health policies that were born in hope but destined for disaster...Of value to historians of medicine.--Gary Greenberg A laudable venture, in which Harrington's intellectual precision and exacting research cannot be faulted.--Helen Thompson Masterful.--Philip Alcabes Harrington's grasp of this story and the clarity with which, with limited moralism, she delivers a tale about the 'big picture' of psychiatry and neurology is emblematic of the historian's craft.--Stephen T. Casper