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Gerlof Verwey. Wilhelm Griesinger: Psychiatrie als ärztlicher Humanismus. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Arts & Boeve, 2004. ? + 109 pp. 111. No price given (paperbound, 90-75341-31-8).
Like his earlier work Psychiatry in an Anthropological and Biomedical Context (1985), Gerlof Verwey's most recent book on Wilhelm Griesinger is a careful, concise, and clearly argued study. He begins by briefly situating Griesinger in the political and cultural climes of Biedermeier Germany, spanning the divide between bourgeois, apolitical quietism on the one hand, and sociopolitical and revolutionary engagement on the other. Then, after a short biographic sketch, he turns to the main focus of his study-namely, Griesinger's medical self-understanding as both a scientist and an ethical humanist. In Verwey's account, Griesinger's most important psychiatric legacy lies in the realm of medical ethics. Whereas other accounts stress his conceptual contributions to biological or psychodynamic psychiatry, Verwey argues for a more subtle history of Griesinger's reception that stresses, above all, its normative content.
In many respects, Verwey's study represents an attempt to correct a...