Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context slang English) A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink. 2 Literally, one who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes.
WordNet
n. a physician who specializes in psychiatry [syn: psychiatrist, shrink]
a savage who cuts off and preserves the heads of enemies as trophies [syn: headhunter]
Usage examples of "head-shrinker".
Olive, they said, had a head-shrinker in New York that cost fifty bucks a crack.
Urbain Street boys into the camp free each season, helping out Rubin with his mortgage after the fire there, paying a head-shrinker fortunes to make a man out of Irwin Shubert, his enemy of old ("Throwing good money after bad," people said), building a special house for the epileptic who had been hurt working for him in those bygone days of his struggles, and giving so many benefit nights for worthy causes.
A jinxy sort of guy or gal whose close friends show a remarkable tendency to crack up, to suicide perhaps, to call the head-shrinkers a bit too late, to take long vacations in the looney bin—or vacations that are longer than long.