Customer Reviews

Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary

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As a person who works in the psychiatric field, You can only remember so many terms before the brain turns off. Many of the older physicians use terms used years ago from the days pre-DSM or DSM I or II. Or, if you work around some of the psychoanalysts, they use terms all the time that just aren't used practically. Well, this dictionary is very helpful to look that stuff up in. much easier to navigate than the big bible of psychiatry, Kaplan and Saddock, and definitely more helpful that the DSM-IV, which doens't do squat to define a thing...it assumes you know what they are talking about. So no matter what level you are, Tech, nurse, student, resident, or Doctor, this is a great book to have in those slow moment of memory.

I always thought this the definitive dictionary for psychiatry and certainly it is hors concours and very useful as a companion particularly in training (I say this with the wisdom of hindsight).

That said, I just opened my fresh copy of the most recent edition of Campbell's and read the entry of "psychosis", every definition but the correct one and no citation to support his eccentric and dated definitions. That's not good. Then I found a weird error under "Creutzfeldt-Jakob", he lists another name for this as "Heidenheim disease", at the same time that he lists the Heidenhain variant. I know the Heidenhain variant, the other is a misprint or misunderstanding and does not exist. If you Google the term "Heidenheim disease", only his own book comes up for example. Oops.

Numerous other mistakes or omissions: he includes a definition for "secondary delusion" without ever defining "primary delusion", though he refers to it and it is a critical term. One buggaboo I have with books that provide historical bios: he identifies a historical figure as a "psychiatrist" or a "neurologist" or as a "neuropsychiatrist" without ever defining these terms, reinforcing inaccurate stereotypes that are a product of outdated understandings. Under the entry for "Wagner-Jauregg", he doesnt even mention he won the Nobel Prize.

So use it but don't take it as definitive, particularly because he is not supporting his entries with a citation.