Elizabeth Lunbeck seeks to probe the dynamics and underlying cultural assumptions of psychiatric thought and practice. In a significant way, she lays the foundation for an understanding of the subsequent emergence of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychiatry. Not only will her book be of interest to social and cultural historians, but it will also find an audience among those concerned with gender-relates issues. -- Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers University

In the years between 1900 and 1930, American psychiatrists transformed their profession from a marginal science focused primarily on the care of the mentally ill into a powerful discipline concerned with analyzing the common difficulties of everyday life. How did psychiatrists effect such a dramatic change in their profession's fortunes and aims? Here, Elizabeth Lunbeck examines how psychiatry grew to take the whole world of human endeavor as its object.