"of, pertaining to, or connected with psychiatry," 1837, from German psychiatrisch or French psychiatrique or else coined in English from psychiatry + -ic.
"one who practices psychiatry," 1875, from psychiatry + -ist.
A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies Bergère and looks at the audience. [Anglican Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, 1961]
An older name was mad-doctor (1703); also psychiater "expert in mental diseases" (1852), from Greek psykhē + iatros. Also see alienist.
also nonjudgmental, "avoiding moral judgments," by 1950 in education and psychiatry, from non- + judgmental.
"spontaneously playful," 1940, a term in psychiatry, from French ludique, from Latin ludere "to play" (see ludicrous).
c. 1600, "performance of deeds;" 1660s, "performance of plays;" verbal noun from present participle of act (v.). Acting out "abnormal behavior caused by unconscious influences" is from 1945 in psychiatry.
1776, "functional derangement arising from disorders of the nervous system (not caused by a lesion or injury)," coined by Scottish physician William Cullen (1710-1790) from Greek neuron "nerve" (see neuro-) + Modern Latin -osis "abnormal condition." Originally of epilepsy, hysteria, neuralgia, etc. Used in a general psychological sense from 1871, "change in the nerve cells of the brain resulting in symptoms of stress," but not radical loss of touch with reality (psychosis); clinical use in psychiatry dates from 1923.
