The fascinating story of psychiatry's origins, demise, and redemption, by the former president of the American Psychiatric Association.

Psychiatry has come a long way since the days of chaining "lunatics" in cold cells and parading them as freakish marvels before a gaping public. But, as Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, reveals in his extraordinary and eye-opening audiobook, the path to legitimacy for "the black sheep of medicine" has been anything but smooth.

In Shrinks Dr. Lieberman traces the field from its birth as a mystic pseudoscience through its adolescence as a cult of "shrinks" to its late-blooming maturity - beginning after World War II - as a science-driven profession that saves lives. With fascinating case studies and portraits of the luminaries of the field - from Sigmund Freud to Eric Kandel - Shrinks is a gripping and illuminating listen and an urgent call to arms to dispel the stigma of mental illnesses by treating them as diseases rather than unfortunate states of mind.