The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has updated its Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, including with new information specifically addressed to individuals in the European Economic Area. As described in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, this website utilizes cookies, including for the purpose of offering an optimal online experience and services tailored to your preferences.

Please read the entire Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. By closing this message, browsing this website, continuing the navigation, or otherwise continuing to use the APA's websites, you confirm that you understand and accept the terms of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, including the utilization of cookies.

×
No Access

Turning points in twentieth-century American psychiatry

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.147.10.1267

The author examines four major turning points in twentieth-century American psychiatry, emphasizing the movement during the post-World War II period toward a psychotherapeutic/psychoanalytic approach and the emergence of biological psychiatry, neuroscience, and logical positivism during the 1970s and 1980s. He discusses the impact of Adolf Meyer during the mid-twentieth century and his ongoing influence. The final turning point involves a prediction of a late twentieth-century change, including new directions in nosology, emphasis on combined pharmacotherapeutic/psychotherapeutic treatments, efforts to create alternatives to full inpatient care, better outcome data for psychiatric treatments, and beginning resolution of major boundary problems of current practice.

Access content

To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access.