A Bicentennial address: Benjamin Rush and those who came after him

In this Bicentennial year, the author takes a look at the early days of Amercan psychiatry, focusing on some of the great men who helped to form the discipline. These men have much to teach us in a time when the field is divided within and faces a crisis of public confidence without. We can learn much from men like Benjamin Rush, who although they were actively involved in the social movements of their day, remained always the physician. Dr. Braceland suggests that it is time for psychiatry to move back into the mainstream of medicine, retaining, of course, mastery of psychotherpeutic techniques and knowledge of psychodynamics. This move can best be accomplished by employing the principle of complementarity, the art of encompassing different approaches to problems and utilizing the essentials of each to arrive at workable solutions.