Head First: A psychiatrist’s stories of mind and body

By Alastair Santhouse

by Deborah Jane 7th March 2025

My interest in medicine came from my mother. She qualified as a doctor in the 1940s. In the 1960s she trained as a psychiatrist, specialising in hypnosis. At that time there was a pill for everything, so she was out of step with her colleagues. She believed most mental illness was a rational response to intolerable situations, and that listening to people was often more useful than giving them drugs.