Reviews
Reviews
What critics have written about the books.
When Healing Harms
“[When Healing Harms] fills in the layers of Osheroff’s story using primary sources . . . that previous tellings have largely ignored. The result is a book . . . about what happens when institutions prioritize the preservation of their own power above all else.”
“[A]s intriguing as a legal thriller, and as incisive as a political exposé.”
The US Review of Books “Eric Caplan’s fascinating medical history book When Healing Harms recounts a pivotal case of psychiatric malpractice and its consequences . . . a revealing exposé of medical malpractice that reconstitutes the long-silenced voice of a psychiatric patient.”
Foreword ReviewsRead “Gripping account of a malpractice case that changed psychiatric care.”
Publishers Weekly, BookLife “A highly informative, richly detailed account of a hugely influential legal decision.”
Kirkus Indie
In conversation
Interviews & features
Psychiatry at the Margins
The Lawsuit That Came to Symbolize the Fall of Psychoanalytic Psychiatry: Eric Caplan on Osheroff v. Chestnut Lodge
A long conversation on the Osheroff case, what the record actually shows, and why the story has been told wrong for forty years.
Read the interview
Looking for pre-publication endorsements? See advance praise.
Also by Eric Caplan
Mind Games
Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy (University of California Press, 1998).
“It supplies the key to the American romance with all forms of mental healing, of which psychoanalysis was the most prominent.”
The Journal of American History
Eli Zaretsky
University of Missouri, Columbia · September 1999
“As much a work of historical archaeology as it is a narrative.”
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Leonard C. Groopman
Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, New York · Vol. 74, No. 2, Summer 2000
“It is difficult to imagine a reader who will not come away from the book both better informed and also dazzled.”
Metapsychology
Robert L. Woolfolk
Rutgers University; Princeton University · February 1, 2000
“Important for its significant reconceptualization of the origins of American psychotherapy.”
American Scientist
Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr.
Texas A&M University · Vol. 87, May–June 1999
“Like all good history, Caplan’s discussion of the origins of psychotherapy serves to illuminate current debates.”
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
Allan Horwitz
Rutgers University · Vol. 27, No. 1, February 2002
“His work will be both stimulating and useful to a large scholarly audience.”
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Ellen Dwyer
Indiana University · Vol. XXX, No. 4, Spring 2000
“This book succeeds in opening up the latter subject to serious scrutiny.”
The American Historical Review
Janet Golden
Rutgers University, Camden · February 2000