It is a lazy book reviewer who starts with an extensive quotation from the book reviewed, but I think the following encapsulates the contents of this book and the characteristics of its author:
“Psychological Medicine has now been in existence for about as long as its predecessor, and during this period, I, like Winslow (the editor of the first journal called Psychological Medicine, published between 1848 and 1861), have been its sole editor, responsible for the appearance of a journal which has so far carried some 2000 articles and many million words. In the process I have come to appreciate that to most readers a journal is little more than an object which appears on desks or through letterboxes at regular intervals and may or may not be scrutinised, according to inclination. Very few readers of journals have assumed editorial responsibility, though some may have served on editorial boards or refereed manuscripts. Their professional contact with editors largely comes about in their capacity as potential authors, one of whom has indicated the emotion latent in the relationship by defining an editor as a person with a mission to suppress rising genius”.
This extract falls into three parts. The first sentence looks like pompous self-importance: the great editor is speaking. The next two sentences are a complete contrast. They demonstrate a precision in the use of language and a sardonic attention to detail often shown in the writings of others, but seldom in apposition to sentences such as that which precedes them. This is the characteristic of mocking erudition. The third sentence demonstrates something which Michael Shepherd had in abundance, humour, which often had a hint of malice about it, best summed up as the German word schadenfreude. These three elements combined in one man and his writings may or may not be unique, but I have certainly never seen it before, and this may explain the puzzlement which many experience when reading and hearing about Michael Shepherd and why there is such a contrast in people's views of him.
The 18 papers in this revised anthology, nicely chosen by the two Davids who were his greatest admirers, illustrate all three of these characteristics in abundance. His original paper on morbid jealousy, published in 1961, includes words from nine languages, and some of the English ones, such as hormic, congeries and gynocidal, are worthy of Anthony Burgess at his worst excesses of etymological gymnastics. His account of the relation between Jaspers's views of psychopathology and current science also shows elements of this. Mocking erudition is shown in his interesting account of Arise Evans, a soothsayer with claims of divine knowledge at the time of Charles II, whom Shepherd concludes “had a revelatory psychosis”. His painstaking review of John Ryle “originally published as an introduction to a book”, his whimsical account of Otto Rank, and barbed critique “ What price psychotherapy?” also demonstrate this characteristic. Michael Shepherd was never far from iconoclasm and his delicate dismemberment of Emil Kraepelin, illustrating that politically he had the same combination of German nationalism and racial purity that would have made a Nazi glow, is perhaps the best of this group.
His humour comes through repeatedly in his writings, but sometimes it is so wrapped in disguises that it takes a great deal of hard work to identify. I include several of the most readable chapters in the book under this heading, including his two chapters on Aubrey Lewis, which, while praising Lewis to the skies, sends barbs in every direction, at his Maudsley lecture on changing disciplines in psychiatry, which he starts by quoting Virginia Woolf “ that lecturing is a total waste of time”, and ends by suggesting that psychological medicine embraces multi-disciplinary polygamy. However, it is best demonstrated in his linking of Sherlock Holmes and ‘The case of Dr Freud’, where, after bringing them together in a masterpiece of invention he leaves them “basking in mutual admiration in the no-man's land between fact and fiction”.
Having identified these three elements, I still do not feel I understand the real Michael Shepherd, and this book only gives vague clues that need an expert detective. Which one of these would be his most fitting epilogue? When I worked for him as a registrar 30 years ago he wanted me to make a full assessment of a young man whom he found had had a certain amount of social contact with a neighbour, who happened to be one of his colleagues, Professor John Wing. He quickly devised a scenario whereby it was possible to obtain the diagnosis of this young man only by interviewing Professor Wing. I dutifully fell into the trap and persuaded John Wing to see me. His conclusion was “ in the United States this young man would be described as having a personality disorder”. When I reported this back to Michael Shepherd he was amused beyond belief. I never understood why. What was he really getting at? I wonder if in his life's work he was just taking all of us for a ride.
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