Max fink

Max Fink (born 1923) is an American psychiatrist best known for his work on ECT (electroconvulsive therapy).

Early life, marriage and qualifications
Fink was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1923. His parents were a doctor and a social worker. The family left Austria for the US in 1924.

Fink married in 1949. He and wife Martha have 3 children: a professor of geology and 2 professors of biology.

Fink studied medicine at New York Medical College, qualifying in 1945. He spent a year as an army medical officer. By 1954 he was board certified in psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalysis.

Academic positions, research and awards
Fink was appointed research professor of psychiatry at Washington University in 1962, at New York Medical College in 1966 and professor of psychiatry and neurology at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1972.

Early research included federal government funded research into the use of opiates and cannabis and studies in electroencephalography. For the past fifty years Fink's main interest has been ECT. Over the years his ideas on ECT have evolved from an early suggestion that the biochemical basis of ECT is similar to that of craniocerebral trauma through to statements that organic mental syndrome is seen in all patients following ECT but is usually transient and finally to the position that ECT-induced memory loss is a hysterical symptom with parallels to the Camelford incident. In 1985 Fink founded the journal Convulsive Therapy (now called the Journal of ECT). He was a member of the American Psychiatric Association's task forces on ECT 1975-1978 and 1987-1990.

Fink's awards include the Electroshock Research Association Award (1956), the Laszlo Meduna Prize of the Hungarian National Institute for Nervous and Mental Disease (1986), and Lifetime Achievement Awards of the Psychiatric Times (1995) and of the Society of Biological Psychiatry (1996).

Retirement
Since retirement in 1997 Fink has been professor emeritus of psychiatry and neurology at SUNY at Stony Brook and has been on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the LIJ-Hillside Medical Center. He spends much of his time writing; recent books include Electroshock: restoring the mind (1999, Oxford University Press) and, with Jan-Otto Ottosson, Ethics in electroconvulsive therapy (2004, Brunner Routledge). Through the Scion Natural Science Association Fink has funded a book on the history of ECT by Edward Shorter and David Healy.