1893-1990
Popularizer Publicizer of Psychiatry

The Human Mind.

In 1930 the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger published his bestseller, The Human Mind, a book that gave the psychopathology of everyday life and the workings of the mind a new meaning to many Americans. The psychiatrist in The Human Mind took the reader into his practice and let him see how the world looked when viewed through a psychiatrist's eyes. Menninger openly discussed the everyday problems of mental illness, and, in doing so, the reading population of the country developed new insights into both mental illness and the psychiatric specialty. Menninger's name appeared widely in newspapers and magazines as he also published articles and reached the public in the Nation, the New Republic, and the Ladies' Home Journal. In many minds Menninger's name and psychiatry became indivisible. Psychiatry had found a spokesman, and the Menninger family became the family...