Andrew Scull provides a wide-ranging and critical perspective on the profession that dominates the treatment of mental illness. He traces the rise of the field, the midcentury hegemony of psychoanalytic methods, and the paradigm’s decline with the ascendance of biological and pharmaceutical approaches to mental illness. Ranging from the age of the asylum to the rise of psychopharmacology and the dubious triumphs of “community care,” Scull shows the impact of psychiatry’s ideas and interventions on the lives of those afflicted with mental illness.