I just got a copy of an article by Warner Silas (1982) entitled "What is a headshrinker" which appeared in the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Silas reviews the concept and points out that the first use of the term in popular media appears to be the November 27, 1950 issue of Time magazine in a story about Hopalong Cassidy. Headshrinker is asterisked in the text and a footnote states "Hollywood jargon for a psychiatrist". One can locate the article online at the Time magazine website and it corroborates Silas' account.
A search of newspapers via Proquest shows that the first use of headshrinker in "newspapers of record" is in 1955 in an article in the NY Times and an article in the Washington Post by Dorothy Kilgallen. Oddly, earliest article in the online database for "Variety" that mentions shrink in an is a 1980 review of "Dressed to Kill". So, it appears that headshrinker was used as slang in the late 1940s in Hollywood/Los Angeles and came into popular use at the start of the 1950s. It is still unclear who was the first person to use the term to refer to a psychiatrist (perhaps an unhappy "client" ;-). -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
