Continuity and Discontinuity in the Historical Development of Modern Psychopharmacology

In the middle of the twentieth century psychiatry underwent a transition that is often referred to as the "psychopharmacology revolution." Implicit in the term revolution is the idea that a paradigm shift occurred. Specifically, it has been argued that psychiatry abandoned the psychoanalyt...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of the history of the neurosciences Vol. 14; no. 3; pp. 199 - 209
Main Authors Baumeister, Alan A., Hawkins, Mike F.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Taylor & Francis Group 01.09.2005
Subjects
History of medicine
history of psychiatry
history of science
History, 20th Century
Humans
Psychiatry - history
psychopharmacology
Psychopharmacology - history
Psychotropic Drugs - history
scientific revolution
Societies, Medical - history
Terminology as Topic
Thomas Kuhn
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Summary:In the middle of the twentieth century psychiatry underwent a transition that is often referred to as the "psychopharmacology revolution." Implicit in the term revolution is the idea that a paradigm shift occurred. Specifically, it has been argued that psychiatry abandoned the psychoanalytic paradigm in favor of a qualitatively distinct conceptual system based on brain chemistry. The validity of this view requires that psychoanalysis had the status of a paradigm. This paper presents evidence that psychoanalysis did not constitute a paradigm and that the advent of psychopharmacology was not, technically, a scientific revolution. Instead, the rise of modern psychopharmacology was the culmination of a linear growth of biological knowledge that began to develop in the nineteenth century.
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ISSN:0964-704X
1744-5213
DOI:10.1080/096470490512562