Madness Explained

Author: Richard P Bentall
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141909323
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Book Description
Today most of us accept the consensus that madness is a medical condition: an illness, which can be identified, classified and treated with drugs like any other. In this ground breaking and controversial work Richard Bentall shatters the myths that surround madness. He shows there is no reassuring dividing line between mental health and mental illness. Severe mental disorders can no longer be reduced to brain chemistry, but must be understood psychologically, as part of normal behaviour andhuman nature. Bentall argues that we need a radically new way of thinking about psychosis and its treatment. Could it be that it is a fear of madness, rather than the madness itself, that is our problem?

Madness Explained

Author: Richard P. Bentall
Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN: 9780141975382
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A revised edition of the groundbreaking classic on mental illness Is madness purely a medical condition that can be treated with drugs? Is there a clear dividing line between who is sane and who is insane? In his groundbreaking work, Madness Explained, leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall shattered the modern myths that surround psychosis. For this revised edition, he adds new material drawing on the recent advances in molecular genetics, new studies of the role of environment in psychosis, and important discoveries on early symptoms preceding illness, among other important developments in our understanding.

Madness and Civilization

Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

A First-Rate Madness

Author: Nassir Ghaemi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143121332
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
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.

Madness in Civilization

Author: Andrew Scull
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691166153
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 12

Book Description
Originally published: London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2015.

Schizophrenia and Common Sense

Author: Inês Hipólito
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331973993X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
This book explores the relationship between schizophrenia and common sense. It approaches this theme from a multidisciplinary perspective. Coverage features contributions from phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, and social cognition. The contributors address the following questions: How relevant is the loss of common sense in schizophrenia? How can the study of schizophrenia contribute to the study of common sense? How to understand and explain this loss of common sense? They also consider: What is the relationship of practical reasoning and logical formal reasoning with schizophrenia? What is the relationship between the person with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and social values? Chapters examine such issues as rationality, emotions, self, and delusion. In addition, one looks at brain structure and neurotransmission. Others explore phenomenological and Wittgensteinian theories. The book features papers from the Schizophrenia and Common Sense International Workshop, held at New University of Lisbon, November 2015. It offers new insights into this topic and will appeal to researchers, students, as well as interested general readers.

Models of Madness

Author: John Read
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1583919066
Category : Schizophrenia
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Book Description
Models of Madnessshows that hallucinations and delusions are understandable reactions to life events and circumstances rather than symptoms of a supposed genetic predisposition or biological disturbance. International contributors: * critique the 'medical model' of madness * examine the dominance of the 'illness' approach to understanding madness from historical and economic perspectives * document the role of drug companies * outline the alternative to drug based solutions * identify the urgency and possibility of prevention of madness. Models of Madness promotes a more humane and effective response to treating severely distressed people that will prove essential reading for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and of great interest to all those who work in the mental health service. This book forms part of the International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Psychoses series edited by Brian Martindale.

Reef Madness

Author: David Dobbs
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307490076
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Explores the century-long controversy over the orgins of coral reefs, a debate that split the world of nineteenth-century science, looking at the diverse roles of Louis Agassiz, his son Alexander, and Charles Darwin and reflecting on how the search for the truth shed new light on the formation of Earth and its natural wonders.

At the Mountains of Madness

Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365199541
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Book Description
"Originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding stories"--Copyright page.

American Madness

Author: Richard Noll
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674062655
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
In 1895 there was not a single case of dementia praecox reported in the United States. By 1912 there were tens of thousands of people with this diagnosis locked up in asylums, hospitals, and jails. By 1927 it was fading away . How could such a terrible disease be discovered, affect so many lives, and then turn out to be something else? In vivid detail, Richard Noll describes how the discovery of this mysterious disorder gave hope to the overworked asylum doctors that they could at last explain—though they could not cure—the miserable patients surrounding them. The story of dementia praecox, and its eventual replacement by the new concept of schizophrenia, also reveals how asylum physicians fought for their own respectability. If what they were observing was a disease, then this biological reality was amenable to scientific research. In the early twentieth century, dementia praecox was psychiatry’s key into an increasingly science-focused medical profession. But for the moment, nothing could be done to help the sufferers. When the concept of schizophrenia offered a fresh understanding of this disorder, and hope for a cure, psychiatry abandoned the old disease for the new. In this dramatic story of a vanished diagnosis, Noll shows the co-dependency between a disease and the scientific status of the profession that treats it. The ghost of dementia praecox haunts today’s debates about the latest generation of psychiatric disorders.