Why are psychiatrists known as "shrinks"?

Your head. The long version was head shrinker and then it became shrink.

@janbb is correct.

“Head shrinker” as in dumber?

I think at one time a bigger head was equated with a bigger brain. e.g “Egghead”.

@janbb + @Jeruba = Google on steroids.

But, @Pachy, no links?

A headshrinker, like the people who created shrunken heads. It’s slang. A joke, sort of. As if a psychiatrist were literally a kind of witch doctor who performed drastic modifications on your brain.

As far as I know, the expression came into use in the 1960s, first just the long form and later shortened. Before that, most people didn’t have anything to do with mental health professionals and mental illness was a condition seldom talked about. During those strange times it started to become fashionable and even “normal” to have a therapist and discuss it openly. Treating the label in a jocular way helped minimize the stigma and the serious implications of having a diagnosable mental health condition. At the time, the DSM was not well known or in widespread use, and everyone you knew didn’t have a condition that was listed in there somewhere.

It’s what @Jeruba and @janbb said.

The therapist is screwing around with your mind. Using the word shrink was almost a way of using self deprecating humor.

Back in the day (around the 50’s and even early 60’s) for people who had really serious mental health problems they (doctors) went as far as cutting into the brain to alter it, known as lobotomies. Eventually, more medications were developed, and therapy became more popular for not so serious mental health issues. In short order it became fairly common to be in therapy. My only point is, there is an attempt to alter the brain.

I also remember the term “headshrinker” from the early sixties, although the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary places the origin of the term in 1950.

While I understand all the posts above, I still don’t see the direct line that would bring “Head Shrinker” into the popular lexicon as slang for psychiatrist.

According to the Cruiser way of thinking…“shrink” slang came about because the Dr. helped shrink the problems in their skull to manageable proportions.

@ibstubro, slang doesn’t come about from some logical direct line. It’s more apt to be metaphorical somehow. It captures some aspect of a thing, often with a humorous twist, and catches on because people find it apt and memorable. Its job may even be to encode or conceal—think of slang terms that you can understand only if you’re in the subculture that uses them.

Associating psychiatry with superstition in this way also insinuates that psychiatry is something less than a serious science.

A humorous dismissal of attempts to reduce the problems in a person’s brain, I can get behind, @Jeruba, @Zissou, and @Cruiser, respectively. Thanks. Those 3 answers in succession tied it up for me, nicely.