Psychiatry and the Business of Madness

Psychiatry and the Business of Madness

Author: B. Burstow

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1137503858

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Based on extensive research, this book is a fundamental critique of psychiatry that examines the foundations of psychiatry, refutes its basic tenets, and traces the workings of the industry through medical research and in-depth interviews.


Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness

Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness

Author: Andrea Daley

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-13

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 3030836924

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This book challenges the perception of the psychiatric chart as a neutral and objective text. The chapters included in this book coalesce to reveal the psychiatric chart as a text that is, in fact, “storied” by institutional ideology that reflects, reinforces, reinterprets, and, at times, resists gendered, raced, sexualized, and classed norms, values, and presuppositions. Intersectional analysis highlights the nuanced ways in which dominant ideologies are activated in chart documentation to produce qualitatively specific psychiatric narratives of distress and related responses in the psychiatric institution. The book serves as a much-needed resource for mental health professionals, education and training programs, and researchers that meaningfully takes into account the social and structural materiality of people’s lives and its impact on experiences of distress. It will also appeal to scholars investigating equity in health care across the fields of Critical Psychology, Disability Studies, Social Work, Allied Health, Mad Studies and Social Justice.


A First-Rate Madness

A First-Rate Madness

Author: Nassir Ghaemi

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2012-06-26

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0143121332

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The New York Times bestseller “A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . .” —The Boston Globe “A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi’s book deserves high marks for original thinking.” —The Washington Post “Provocative, fascinating.” —Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.


Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

Performance, Madness and Psychiatry

Author: A. Harpin

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781137337245

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This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike.


The Spiritual Gift of Madness

The Spiritual Gift of Madness

Author: Seth Farber

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-04-17

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1594777039

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A bold call for the “insane” to reclaim their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural transformation • Explains how many of those diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other forms of “madness” are not ill but experiencing a spiritual awakening • Explores the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement • Reveals how those seen as “mad” must embrace their spiritual gifts to help the coming global spiritual transition Many of the great prophets of the past experienced madness--a breakdown followed by a breakthrough, spiritual death followed by rebirth. With the advent of modern psychiatry, the budding prophets of today are captured and transformed into chronic mental patients before they can flower into the visionaries and mystics they were intended to become. As we approach the tipping point between extinction and global spiritual awakening, there is a deep need for these prophets to embrace their spiritual gifts. To make this happen, we must learn to respect the sanctity of madness. We need to cultivate Mad Pride. Exploring the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement as well as building upon psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s revolutionary theories, Seth Farber, Ph.D., explains that diagnosing people as mad has more to do with social control than therapy. Many of those labeled as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other kinds of “mad” are not ill but simply experiencing different forms of spiritual awakening: they are seeing and feeling what is wrong with society and what needs to be done to change it. Farber shares his interviews with former schizophrenics who now lead successful and inspiring lives. He shows that it is impossible for society to change as long as the mad are suppressed because they are our catalysts of social change. By reclaiming their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural revitalization, the mad--by seeding new visions for our future--can help humanity overcome the spiritual crisis that endangers our survival and lead us to a higher and long-awaited stage of spiritual development.


State of Madness

State of Madness

Author: Rebecca Reich

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1609092333

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What madness meant was a fiercely contested question in Soviet society. State of Madness examines the politically fraught collision between psychiatric and literary discourses in the years after Joseph Stalin's death. State psychiatrists deployed set narratives of mental illness to pathologize dissenting politics and art. Dissidents such as Aleksandr Vol'pin, Vladimir Bukovskii, and Semen Gluzman responded by highlighting a pernicious overlap between those narratives and their life stories. The state, they suggested in their own psychiatrically themed texts, had crafted an idealized view of reality that itself resembled a pathological work of art. In their unsanctioned poetry and prose, the writers Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Siniavskii, and Venedikt Erofeev similarly engaged with psychiatric discourse to probe where creativity ended and insanity began. Together, these dissenters cast themselves as psychiatrists to a sick society. By challenging psychiatry's right to declare them or what they wrote insane, dissenters exposed as a self-serving fiction the state's renewed claims to rationality and modernity in the post-Stalin years. They were, as they observed, like the child who breaks the spell of collective delusion in Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Emperor's New Clothes." In a society where normality means insisting that the naked monarch is clothed, it is the truth-teller who is pathologized. Situating literature's encounter with psychiatry at the center of a wider struggle over authority and power, this bold interdisciplinary study will appeal to literary specialists; historians of culture, science, and medicine; and scholars and students of the Soviet Union and its legacy for Russia today.


Inheriting Madness

Inheriting Madness

Author: Ian Dowbiggin

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1991-05-14

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0520909933

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Historically, one of the recurring arguments in psychiatry has been that heredity is the root cause of mental illness. In Inheriting Madness, Ian Dowbiggin traces the rise in popularity of hereditarianism in France during the second half of the nineteenth century to illuminate the nature and evolution of psychiatry during this period. In Dowbiggin's mind, this fondness for hereditarianism stemmed from the need to reconcile two counteracting factors. On the one hand, psychiatrists were attempting to expand their power and privileges by excluding other groups from the treatment of the mentally ill. On the other hand, medicine's failure to effectively diagnose, cure, and understand the causes of madness made it extremely difficult for psychiatrists to justify such an expansion. These two factors, Dowbiggin argues, shaped the way psychiatrists thought about insanity, encouraging them to adopt hereditarian ideas, such as the degeneracy theory, to explain why psychiatry had failed to meet expectations. Hereditarian theories, in turn, provided evidence of the need for psychiatrists to assume more authority, resources, and cultural influence. Inheriting Madness is a forceful reminder that psychiatric notions are deeply rooted in the social, political, and cultural history of the profession itself. At a time when genetic interpretations of mental disease are again in vogue, Dowbiggin demonstrates that these views are far from unprecedented, and that in fact they share remarkable similarities with earlier theories. A familiarity with the history of the psychiatric profession compels the author to ask whether or not public faith in it is warranted.


The Revolt Against Psychiatry

The Revolt Against Psychiatry

Author: Bonnie Burstow

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-08-20

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 3030233316

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A real eye-opener, this riveting anti/critical psychiatry book is comprised of original cutting-edge dialogues between Burstow (an antipsychiatry theorist and activist) and other leaders in the “revolt against psychiatry,” including radical practitioners, lawyers, reporters, activists, psychiatric survivors, academics, family members, and artists. People in dialogue with the author include Indigenous leader Roland Chrisjohn, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, survivor Lauren Tenney, and scholar China Mills. The single biggest focus/tension in the book is a psychiatry abolition position versus a critical psychiatry (or reformist) position. In the scope of this project, Burstow considers the ways racism, genocide, Indigeneity, sexism, media bias, madness, neurodiversity, and strategic activism are intertwined with critical and antipsychiatry.


Illustrations of Madness (Psychology Revivals)

Illustrations of Madness (Psychology Revivals)

Author: John Haslam

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-27

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1134665164

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John Haslam’s Illustrations of Madness, written in 1810, occupies a special place in psychiatric history, it was the first book-length account of one single psychiatric case written by a British psychiatrist. John Haslam, apothecary to London’s Bethlem Hospital, and a leading psychiatrist of the early-nineteenth century, details the case of James Tilly Matthews, who had been a patient in the hospital for some ten years. Matthews claimed he was sane, as did his friends and certain doctors. Haslam, on behalf of the Bethlem authorities, contended he was insane, and attempted to demonstrate this by presenting a detailed account of Matthew’s own delusional system, as far as possible in Matthew’s own words. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, Roy Porter’s Introduction to this facsimile reprint of an historic book goes beyond Haslam’s text to reveal the extraordinary psychiatric politics surrounding Matthew’s confinement and the court case it produced, leading up to Haslam’s dismissal from his post. Still relevant today, Haslam’s account can be used as material upon which to base a modern diagnosis of Matthew’s disorder.


Outside Mental Health

Outside Mental Health

Author: Will Hall

Publisher: Madness Radio

Published: 1966-02-03

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9780996514309

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Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. In this remarkable collection of interviews and essays, therapist, Madness Radio host, and schizophrenia survivor Will Hall asks, "What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?" More than 60 voices of psychiatric patients, scientists, journalists, doctors, activists, and artists create a vital new conversation about empowering the human spirit by transforming society. "Bold, fearless, and compellingly readable... a refuge and an oasis from the overblown claims of American psychiatry" - Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became an Illness "A terrific conversation partner." - Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness "Brilliant...wonderfully grand and big-hearted." - Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America "Must-read for anyone interested in creating a more just and compassionate world." - Alison Hillman, Open Society Foundation Human Rights Initiative "An intelligent, thought-provoking, and rare concept. These are voices worth listening to." - Mary O'Hara, The Guardian "A new, helpful, liberating-and dare I say, sane-way of re-envisioning our ideas of mental illness." Paul Levy, Director of the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center, Portland, Oregon "A fantastic resource for those who are seeking change." Dr. Pat Bracken MD, psychiatrist and Clinical Director of Mental Health Service, West Cork, Ireland