History and Concepts of Psychiatry

A clear tour from ancient Greece to the DSM and beyond—giving you a coherent framework to think scientifically and practice humanistically.

You’ll learn how to:

Distinguish Hippocratic, disease-based medicine from Galenic, symptom-based “balance”—and why that old debate still echoes in today’s “chemical imbalance” narratives.

Trace psychiatry’s split after 1900: Kraepelin’s disease courses vs. Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Bleuler’s “schizophrenia” bridging both.

Use Jaspers’ methods—causal explanation vs. meaningful understanding—to interpret cases; see how existential/phenomenological ideas (Binswanger, Heidegger) map onto clinical states.

Understand the origins and limits of the biopsychosocial model (Meyer → Engel), and how pragmatic eclecticism shaped mainstream practice.

Read the DSM historically: from administrative lists to symptom checklists—and how to judge diagnostic validity beyond symptoms alone.

Adopt “medical humanism”: be biological and reductionistic when disease warrants it, yet fully person-centered when problems are interpersonal, existential, or social.

Apply course-of-illness and family-history validators—plus best available evidence—to make cleaner diagnoses and safer, more effective decisions.

What’s included:

8 in-depth lectures (7–8 hours) with Dr. Ghaemi.

Concise slide walkthroughs linking history, philosophy, and clinical practice.

Practical frameworks you can use the next day (diagnostic validation, model selection, when to favor meds vs. psychotherapy—or both).

Who it’s for:

Psychiatrists, psychiatric NPs/PAs, primary-care clinicians, psychologists, and trainees who want historical depth and conceptual clarity that improves real-world decisions at the bedside.