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Electrotherapy and mental illness: then and now

Emory University, Sander34{at}aol.com

Today electrotherapy has reappeared as a therapy of choice for the treatment of depression and other forms of mental illness. It had de facto vanished from allopathic medicine from the 1920s to the end of the century. The debates about electrotherapy mirror the question of whether mental illness was somatic and to be treated by somatic means or psychological to be treated with psychotherapy. Sigmund Freud's move from an advocate to an opponent of electrotherapy is exemplary for a shift in attitude and the decline of electrotherapy. With the re-somaticization of mental illness over the past decades has come the reappearance of somatic therapies such as electrotherapy.

Key Words: anti-Semitism • electrotherapy • globus hystericus • mental illness • Sigmund Freud • vagal nerve stimulation • voice

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 19, No. 3, 339-357 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X07082566


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