John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Rochester Studies in Medical History, 17)

Weindling, Paul

ISBN 10: 1580464602 / ISBN 13: 9781580464604

Published by University of Rochester Press, 2013

About this Item

No marks in text. Not a library book. One copy only of this title. Ships in a cardboard enclosure. THE BOOK YOU SEE DESCRIBED IS THE COPY YOU WILL RECEIVE. Tim's Used Books, open shop in Provincetown, Mass., providing good books at reasonable prices on the same spot since 1991. shelf J.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Rochester Studies in Medical History, 17)
• Publisher: University of Rochester Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1580464602
• ISBN 13: 9781580464604
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fine
• Dimensions: 14.86W x 22.43H x 3.45D centimeters 14.86 centimeters width by 22.43 centimeters height by 3.45 centimeters depth
• Weight: 1.62 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

Biography of a World War II-era physician whose work was a response to the suffering of Holocaust victims, and whose investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg Medical Trials.

John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust is the biography of a doctor whose revulsion at Nazi human experiments prompted him to seek a humane basis for physician-patient relations. As a military scientific intelligence officer in 1945, Thompson was the first to name "medical war crimes" as a special category for prosecution. His investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg medical trials and for the novel idea of "informed consent." Yet, Thompson has remained a little-known figure, despite his many scientific, literary, and religious connections.
This book traces Thompson's life from his birth in Mexico, through his studies at Stanford, Edinburgh, and Harvard, and his service in the Canadian Air Force. It reconstructs his therapeutic work with Unesco in Germany and his time as a Civil Rights activist in New York, where he developed his concept of holistic medicine.
Thompson was close to authors like Auden and Spender and inspirational religious figures like Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. He drew on ideas of Freud, Jung, and Buber. The philosophical and religious dimensions of Thompson's response to Holocaust victims' suffering are key to this study, which cites accounts of psychiatrists, students and patients who knew Thompson personally, war crimes prosecution records, and unpublished personal papers.

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor at the Centre for Health, Medicine and Society: Past and Present, Oxford Brookes University, UK.

About the Author

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research professor in the History of Medicine, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University.