The familiar Hollywood theme of psychiatrists and psychiatric treatment takes a turn "on the couch" in a new book by Glen Gabbard, M.D. and Krin Gabbard, Ph.D. Psychiatry and the Cinema, by published by the American Psychiatric Publishing Group, is a careful scrutiny of cinematic psychiatrist past and present. Through an examination of physician and treatment caricatures, the authors illustrate how moviegoers are led to perceive, and frequently misperceive, the practice of psychiatry and mental illness.

"If psychiatry had not existed, the movies would have had to invent it -- and in a sense they did," writes Irving Schneider, M.D. in the book's foreword. "Psychiatry and the Cinema tells the story of how the movie industry took the profession of psychiatry and transformed it into a hybrid that joined the fantasies of the public with its own quest for profit."

Glen Gabbard, M.D. is a professor in the Karl Menninger School at the Menninger Clinic and the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, KS. Krin Gabbard, Ph.D. teaches film, literature, and cultural studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

To order a copy of Psychiatry and the Cinema call 1-800-368-5777.

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Contact: Erin Murphy
emurphy@psych.org
202-628-6324
American Psychiatric Association
30-Mar-1999