Category: Psychoanalysis

In Memory of Dr. Stefan de Schill

February 9, 2023, is the eighteenth anniversary of the death of Dr. Stefan de Schill. In 2005, that day was on Ash Wednesday, the earliest date Ash Wednesday could fall. The directors of The American Mental Health Foundation take some moments to honor Dr. de Schill’s memory. As long-time director of research, he devoted his […]

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Michelle Harrison, MD, Joins The American Mental Health Foundation Board of Directors

Michelle Harrison, MD, has joined The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF) directors’ board as of July 1, 2018. She is the only director also serving on the AMHF professional-advisory board. Dr. Harrison is a U.S. physician of family medicine, psychiatry, and obstetrics with international stature. From 2006 to the present, Dr. Harrison directs Childlife Preserve Shishur Sevay, which […]

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Henry Kellerman’s There’s No Handle on My Door: Stories of Patients in Mental Hospitals Is Available as an Audiobook

Now available just in time for the 2017 holidays and New Year, this fascinating book probes institutional life via 9 unforgettable profiles. In the words of its author, Dr. Henry Kellerman: “The unalloyed truth is that I’m in thrall to idiosyncrasy. It can be said that I actually love pathology. Let me explain: It’s that […]

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Erich Fromm’s Beyond Freud (1992, 2010) Is Available as an Audiobook

Available as an audiobook along with three other of Erich Fromm‘s works issued by American Mental Health Foundation Books (along with Coping with Anxiety in an Age of Terrorism, new, by Dr. Raymond B. Flannery Jr., and soon, There’s No Handle on My Door: Stories of Patients in Mental Hospitals, by Dr. Henry Kellerman): Beyond Freud: From Individual […]

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Alexis Tomarken, MSW, PhD, Joins the AMHF Advisory Board

The American Mental Health Foundation is delighted to announce Alexis Tomarken, MSW, PhD, has joined its professional advisory board. Dr. Tomarken is a psychologist in private practice in New York City and a supervisor in the clinical-psychology doctoral program at Long Island University (LIU). Over recent years, Dr. Tomarken has trained as a psychoanalytic candidate in the […]

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The American Mental Health Foundation on Public Voice Salon, with John Bredin, Host

Immediately following the 2017 US-presidential inauguration, members of The American Mental Health Foundation professional-advisory board, Drs. Henry Kellerman and William Van Ornum, were filmed on Public Voice Salon. John Bredin is the gracious host. The freewheeling conversation, centering on the state of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis today, also included Mr. Evander Lomke, executive director, discussing the history […]

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Honoring Dr. Stefan de Schill at 100: April 4, 2017

April 4 is the 100th birthday of Dr. Stefan de Schill. Dr. de Schill was director of research of The American Mental Health Foundation from 1948 till his death on February 9, 2005, Ash Wednesday. He devoted his life to individuals with emotional problems, as a leading proponent internationally of group psychotherapy. De Schill’s two […]

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The Sixth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation

This is the sixth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), a research organization formed in 1924, incorporated in New York State December 31, 1954. In 2017, AMHF celebrates 93 years of philanthropic service and activities—“Advancing Mental Health: A Century of Excellence in Mental Health Research.”   Vision: Building a More Compassionate Society—Get Involved!   Mission: AMHF endeavors […]

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Two recent notices There’s No Handle on My Door and Violence

AMHF Books has received two recent and superb notices of its books from Midwest Book Review. The first is for There’s No Handle on My Door: Stories of Patients in Mental Hospitals by Dr. Henry Kellerman (who is pictured) “In There’s No Handle on My Door, Henry Kellerman probes institutional life through nine fascinating profiles. […]

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Eleventh Anniversary of the Passing of Dr. Stefan de Schill

Yesterday, February 9, 2016, was the eleventh anniversary of the death of Dr. Stefan de Schill: Ash Wednesday, 2005, and the earliest Western date this holiday could fall. Today, February 10 of 2016, is Ash Wednesday. We honor the vision and work of Dr. de Schill always. De Schill’s long and fruitful career, his passion […]

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Superb Notice of AMHF Professional Advisory Board Member Dr. Henry Kellerman in The Midwest Book Review

“A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception. Delusions typically occur in the context of neurological or mental illness, although they are not tied to […]

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AMHF Books Publishes Anatomy of Delusion by Dr. Henry Kellerman

The official publication date was yesterday! March 24. Anatomy of Delusion by Dr. Henry Kellerman is available in traditional-paperback as well as Kindle formats. In his new book, Kellerman both defines and discusses “Delusion” as a phenomenon that is simply not understood by theoretical and/or practicing clinicians. Dr. Kellerman is on the professional-advisory board of […]

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AMHF: Advancing Mental Health for 90 Years

The Fourth Annual Report of the American Mental Health Foundation

Following is the fourth Annual Report (November 1, 2013, to October 31, 2014) of The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), a research organization formed in 1924, incorporated in New York State December 31, 1954. In 2014, AMHF celebrates ninety years of philanthropic service and activities—“Advancing Mental Health.” Vision: Building a More Compassionate Society—Get Involved! This […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Bell Jar” (1979, 2013?)

This is the final blog in the AMHF series of twenty-one films relating to “Hollywood and Psychiatry.” These blogs have taken us from ca. 1921, and the release of silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a mere three years before The American Mental Health Foundation was organized, into the twenty-first century. The first blog […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “Girl, Interrupted” (1999)

This is film number twenty of twenty-one in the AMHF series, focusing on a range of Hollywood depictions of psychiatry, analysts, and individuals under analysis, from the silent era to the present. (The final film for discussion, an updated version of The Bell Jar, will be included as a kind of “what may be” assuming […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “Crime Doctor” (1943; series 1943-49)

Counting all ten films in the Crime Doctors series as one, this is the nineteenth of twenty-one Hollywood films, from AMHF, devoted to images of psychiatry, psychiatrists, and psychology. These (basically) one-hour films are in a time-honored, formulaic tradition. As comic-book writers fashioned superheroes with separate, mundane identities, so, a little closer to the workings […]

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AMHF at BookExpo America

For three days last week American Mental Health Foundation Books shared a booth with its distributor, Lantern, at the annual BookExpo America—which is held at the Jacob Javits Center on New York City’s West Side. (New York remains the publishing capital of North America, even with the multitude of changes the industry has seen.) The […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Three Faces of Eve” (1957)

Once known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is the subject of film number eighteen of twenty-one in the AMHF series on psychiatry in Hollywood. The Three Faces of Eve covers a most controversial disorder—often outright debunked as the current (as of this writing) DSM-4 had made significant changes to the diagnosis. […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Secret Diary of Sigmund Freud” (1984)

Do you find the concept of a dreaming phrenologist at all funny? I didn’t think so. Once upon a time, psychoanalysis was viewed as nothing but a shabby cousin of phrenology. Freud and his followers changed all this, even though the tired gags of the usually brilliant Woody Allen might leave one to believe otherwise. […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “Vertigo” (1958)

Do you know what acrophobia is? The 1950s, like the 1940s, was a rich era for Hollywood depictions of “psychological problems” and themes—especially around words, terms, and concepts not generally known to audiences as such are today: in part, though we often do not realize it, thanks to the very movies we are putting “on […]

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Therapy Strikes Out?

Several weeks ago Evander, as part of the series of films on mental health, posted a review of Fear Strikes Out. This unique story–coming out mid-point in outfielder Jimmy Piersall’s career—highlights Piersall’s emotional problems and strange behaviors: talking to Babe Ruth’s statue in the Yankee Stadium outfield, squirting home plate with a water pistol so […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “Awakenings” (1990)

Where does the study of neurology leave off and that of psychiatry and psychology begin? (After all, Sigmund Freud was a neurologist.) Do we understand the intermingling of memory and time? What is “real” and what is “perceived”? What are some of the challenges of the aging consciousness? Here is film number fourteen, “analyzed” in […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “An Angel at My Table” (1990)

This is the thirteenth of twenty-one films in the series on psychiatry in film. The plot summary is provided by Judd Blaise Rovi. New Zealand poet Janet Frame is the subject of Jane Campion’s biographical drama, which presents a poetically evocative look at the author’s turbulent life. The film begins with Frame’s childhood, showing her […]

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Psychoanalysis: Adam Phillips

The current February 25, 2013, issue of The New Yorker contains a review of UK psychoanalytic-writer Adam Phillips’s latest book Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. The always-interesting Joan Acocella gives and takes in her notice regarding Phillips’s “invitation” to consider Freud as a philosopher. “Phillips loves Freud. He cites him again and […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Snake Pit” (1948)

I feel unusually close to The Snake Pit, personally, if not intimately and daily, working with one of the writers, Millen Brand, during my early days in book publishing. This, the tenth film out of twenty-one in the AMHF series, required significant research from the filmmakers in adapting an autobiographical novel by Jane Ward. The […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1921, remade 1992)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the eighth of twenty-one films discussed in this blog. It is the earliest movie and the only silent one. It works by flashback and is a vivid visual re-creation of intensely scrambled mental states. The story line, somewhat condensed from Wikipedia, is as follows: The main narrative is introduced […]

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Psychiatry Films from AMHF: “Spellbound” (1945)

This is the seventh film under under close scrutiny in the AMHF series of films. (We “analyze” other movies in different blogs. But not all are come within this series of, eventually, twenty-one.) Alfred Hitchcock had worked under David O. Selznick five years before, directing Rebecca. The association of two such egos was more a […]

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State of the State of Mental Health 2013

This month governors and the President are reflecting on what is going on in their respective territories. I thought this would be a good time to look at the state of the state of mental health and to offer my own reflections. DSM V Will Be Issued This year will inaugurate the new DSM V. […]

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Northrop Frye and Mental Health

There is much more to be said on this centennial anniversary of Northrop Frye’s birth. After reading Evander’s recent blog, I ordered a copy of Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism. This edition included a new foreword by Harold Bloom. How is Frye’s work related to mental health? Evander’s posting makes us wonder if Frye’s work and […]

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Easter Sunday and the Revolution of Hope

Today on Easter Sunday Erich Fromm‘s The Revolution of Hope offers us a discussion on the paradox and need for hope in human affairs, Resurrection, as well as psycho-spiritual renewal. In this optimistic work, the noted humanist draws upon religious traditions to help everyone in our secular world.

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