An Illustrated Guide to Famous (and Infamous) Figures from the History of Psychiatry

My writing career has been like a time-travel cruise studded with real-life celebrities. In my Sano Ichiro samurai detective series set in 17th and 18th century Japan, I got up close and personal with the shogun. In my two Charlotte Bronte novels, I hobnobbed with the famous author from Haworth, England and none other than Queen Victoria. I began my Sarah Bain series with a backstage pass to the Jack the Ripper investigation, starring some of the most famous cops in police history.

My new novel, Resurrection Kill, is set in a psychiatric hospital in upstate New York in 1953, a world just as dark as feudal Japan and Victorian England. The psychiatric profession had its own luminaries, who weren’t necessarily well known to the public but were revered—or reviled—among its own membership. Here I’ll introduce some major players. I’m a comics artist as well as a suspense novelist, so I’ve drawn these portraits of them.

Meet Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889 – 1957). A German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud, she immigrated to America during World War II. She invented the concept of the “schizophrenogenic mother,” theorizing that psychological disorders stem from mothers who neglected, overprotected, or otherwise mistreated their children. Her legacy is generations of moms getting blamed for all their kids’ problems. Dr. Emma Koffka is her fictional counterpart in Resurrection Kill. 

And then there’s Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman (1895 – 1972), a neurologist who popularized the use of lobotomy for psychiatric patients. His form of lobotomy involved hammering an instrument that resembled an icepick through an eye socket into the brain. 

Here’s how it worked.

Dr. Freeman traveled around the country, performing (sometimes fatal) lobotomies on thousands of patients. He even made house calls—drive-by lobotomies. What a sweetheart! In Resurrection Kill, he struts his stuff as Dr. Bradley Buscher (a.k.a. Dr. Brain-Butcher).

Last but not least is Dr. Ugo Cerletti (1877 – 1963), nominated for the Nobel Prize for his pioneering development of electroconvulsive therapy, a.k.a. shock treatment. While ECT nowadays can be an effective treatment for disorders that are resistant to other therapies, during the early years it was unregulated, primitive science that often caused brain damage. A major character in Resurrection Kill was the unfortunate recipient of recklessly deployed shock treatment. Here, I gave Dr. Cerletti a taste of his own medicine.

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