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

Author: Petteri Pietikäinen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317484452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
Madness: A History is a thorough and accessible account of madness from antiquity to modern times, offering a large-scale yet nuanced picture of mental illness and its varieties in western civilization. The book opens by considering perceptions and experiences of madness starting in Biblical times, Ancient history and Hippocratic medicine to the Age of Enlightenment, before moving on to developments from the late 18th century to the late 20th century and the Cold War era. Petteri Pietikäinen looks at issues such as 18th century asylums, the rise of psychiatry, the history of diagnoses, the experiences of mental health patients, the emergence of neuroses, the impact of eugenics, the development of different treatments, and the late 20th century emergence of anti-psychiatry and the modern malaise of the worried well. The book examines the history of madness at the different levels of micro-, meso- and macro: the social and cultural forces shaping the medical and lay perspectives on madness, the invention and development of diagnoses as well as the theories and treatment methods by physicians, and the patient experiences inside and outside of the mental institution. Drawing extensively from primary records written by psychiatrists and accounts by mental health patients themselves, it also gives readers a thorough grounding in the secondary literature addressing the history of madness. An essential read for all students of the history of mental illness, medicine and society more broadly.

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.

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.

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.

The Geography of Madness

Author: Frank Bures
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612193730
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Why do some men become convinced—despite what doctors tell them—that their penises have, simply, disappeared. Why do people across the world become convinced that they are cursed to die on a particular date—and then do? Why do people in Malaysia suddenly “run amok”? In The Geography of Madness, acclaimed magazine writer Frank Bures investigates these and other “culture-bound” syndromes, tracing each seemingly baffling phenomenon to its source. It’s a fascinating, and at times rollicking, adventure that takes the reader around the world and deep into the oddities of the human psyche. What Bures uncovers along the way is a poignant and stirring story of the persistence of belief, fear, and hope.