Anne Harrington (born 1960)[1] is an American science historian and the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.[2] Her primary research area is the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and cognitive science.
Education and career
Harrington obtained her Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1982. She then attended the University of Oxford, where she earned a doctorate in modern history, specializing in the history of science, in 1985. She returned to Harvard in 1988, after holding postdoctoral positions in London and Freiburg, joining the Department of the History of Science as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 1991 and full professor four years later.[3]
At Harvard, Harrington has taught courses on "Madness and Medicine", "Evolution and Human Nature", "Broken Brains", “Stories under the Skin”, "Freud and the American Academy", "The Minded Body" and "In Search of Mind."[4]
Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness
In this book Harrington shows that the pathological basis of almost all mental disorders remains as unknown today as it was in 1886. Even as psychiatrists prescribe a widening variety of treatments, none of them can say exactly why any of these biological therapies work.[5] Regarding the "chemical imbalance" theory of mental illness, she writes “Ironically, just as the public was embracing the ‘serotonin imbalance’ theory of depression, researchers were forming a new consensus” about the idea behind that theory: It was “deeply flawed and probably outright wrong.”[5]
A reviewer in The Atlantic wrote: "[I]t’s 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."[6]
See also
- Jon Franklin's pulitzer prize winning series The Mind Fixers
Selected publications
- Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain (1987)[7]
- Reenchanted Science (1997)[8]
- The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (2007)[9]
- The Dalai Lama at MIT (co-edited with Arthur Zajonc, 2008)
- Harrington, Anne (2019). Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. Norton. ISBN 9780393071221.[5][10]
References
- ^ "Harrington, Anne 1960-". WorldCat Identities.
- ^ "Anne Harrington". Department of the History of Science. Harvard University. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- ^ "Curriculum Vita" (PDF). Harvard University. 2012. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
- ^ "Anne Harrington". histsci.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
- ^ a b c Greenberg 2019.
- ^ Greenberg, Gary (2019-03-19). "Psychiatry's Incurable Hubris". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-06-30.
- ^ Reviews of Medicine, Mind and the Double Brain:
- Harris, Ruth (1990). The British Journal for the History of Science. 23 (3): 371–373. doi:10.1017/S0007087400044332. JSTOR 4026790. S2CID 145226752.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link) - Kingsland, Sharon E. (1989). Journal of the History of Biology. 22 (1): 177–178. JSTOR 4331083.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
- Harris, Ruth (1990). The British Journal for the History of Science. 23 (3): 371–373. doi:10.1017/S0007087400044332. JSTOR 4026790. S2CID 145226752.
- ^ Review of Reenchanted Science:
- Macrakis, Kristie (1998). German Politics and Society. 16 (3): 150–153. JSTOR 23737382.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
- Macrakis, Kristie (1998). German Politics and Society. 16 (3): 150–153. JSTOR 23737382.
- ^ Reviews of The Cure Within:
- Groopman, Jerome (January 27, 2008). "Faith and Healing". The New York Times. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- Clarfield, A. Mark (2008). New England Journal of Medicine. 359 (4): 440. doi:10.1056/NEJMx080024.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
- ^ Szalai, Jennifer (24 April 2019). "Mental Illness Is All in Your Brain — or Is It?". New York Times. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
- Greenberg, Gary. "Psychiatry's Incurable Hubris". The Atlantic. No. April 2019. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
External links
- "Shulman Lectures - Anne Harrington, "Mindful Minds, Different Brains". YouTube. Yale University. June 7, 2017.
- "Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness - Harvard Book Store". www.harvard.com. Retrieved 2022-04-20.
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This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 14:57