Madness Is Civilization
When the Diagnosis Was Social, 1948-1980
Published on 10. October 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
264 pages
978-0-226-21463-4 (ISBN)
Description
Madness Is Civilization explores the general consensus that societal ills were at the root of mental illness. Michael E. Staub chronicles the surge in influence of socially attuned psychodynamic theories along with the rise of radical therapy and psychiatric survivors' movements. He shows how the theories of antipsychiatry held unprecedented sway over an enormous range of medical, social, and political debates until a bruising backlash against these theories-part of the reaction to the perceived excesses and self-absorptions of the 1960s-effectively distorted them into caricatures. Throughout, Staub reveals that at stake in these debates of psychiatry and politics was nothing less-than how to think about the institution of the family, the nature of the self, and the prospects for, and limits of, social change.
Reviews / Votes
"A valuable contribution to the American intellectual history of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. For older readers, Staub provides a well-researched and insightful recreation of the debates that dominated a bygone period. For younger ones, he is a thoughtful guide to the general intellectual energy that the study of sanity and madness once provided. For both cohorts, he shows how much has been lost because of the absence of a genuinely social view of mental illness in current discourse about normality and abnormality. Staub's highly readable synthesis of a wide range of material is the single best source for a thoughtful discussion of the 'anti-psychiatry' movement that at the same time is so chronologically close yet so intellectually distant from our current era." (Allan V. Horwitz, Social History of Medicine)"More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 23 mm
Width: 17 mm
Thickness: 2 mm
Weight
397 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-21463-4 (9780226214634)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael E. Staub is professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York, and the author of Torn at the Roots: The Crisis of Jewish Liberalism in Postwar America.