Download or read book My Madness Saved Me written by Thomas Szasz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The vast literature on Virginia Woolf's life, work, and marriage falls into two groups. A large majority is certain that she was mentally ill, and a small minority is equally certain that she was not mentally ill but was misdiagnosed by psychiatrists. In this daring exploration of Woolf's life and work, Thomas Szasz--famed for his radical critique of psychiatric concepts, coercions, and excuses--examines the evidence and rejects both views. Instead, he looks at how Virginia Woolf, as well as her husband Leonard, used the concept of madness and the profession of psychiatry to manage and manipulate their own and each other's lives.Do we explain achievement when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""genius""? Do we explain failure when we attribute it to the fictitious entity we call ""madness""? Or do we deceive ourselves the same way that the person deceives himself when he attributes the easy ignition of hydrogen to its being ""flammable""? Szasz interprets Virginia Woolf's life and work as expressions of her character, and her character as the ""product"" of her free will. He offers this view as a corrective against the prevailing, ostensibly scientific view that attributes both her ""madness"" and her ""genius"" to biological-genetic causes. We tend to attribute exceptional achievement to genius, and exceptional failure to madness. Both, says Szasz, are fictitious entities."

Download or read book Making Sense of Madness written by Jim Geekie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-06 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experience of madness – which might also be referred to more formally as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘psychosis’ – consists of a complex, confusing and often distressing collection of experiences, such as hearing voices or developing unusual, seemingly unfounded beliefs. Madness, in its various forms and guises, seems to be a ubiquitous feature of being human, yet our ability to make sense of madness, and our knowledge of how to help those who are so troubled, is limited. Making Sense of Madness explores the subjective experiences of madness. Using clients' stories and verbatim descriptions, it argues that the experience of 'madness' is an integral part of what it is to be human, and that greater focus on subjective experiences can contribute to professional understandings and ways of helping those who might be troubled by these experiences. Areas of discussion include: how people who experience psychosis make sense of it themselves scientific/professional understandings of ‘madness' what the public thinks about ‘schizophrenia’ Making Sense of Madness will be essential reading for all mental health professionals as well as being of great interest to people who experience psychosis and their families and friends.

Download or read book A Philosophy of Madness written by Wouter Kusters and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incredible publishing event: a philosopher draws on his own experience of madness as he takes readers on an unforgettble journey through the philosophy of psychosis and the psychosis of philosophy. In this book, philosopher and linguist Wouter Kusters examines the philosophy of psychosis--and the psychosis of philosophy. By analyzing the experience of psychosis in philosophical terms, Kusters not only emancipates the experience of the psychotic from medical classification, he also emancipates the philosopher from the narrowness of academia, allowing philosphers to engage in real-life praxis, philosophy in vivo. Philosophy and madness--Kusters's preferred, non-medicalized term--coexist, one mirroring the other. Drawing on his own experience of madness--two episodes of psychosis, twenty years apart--Kusters argues that psychosis presents itself to the psychotic as an inescapable truth and reality.

Download or read book Method In Madness written by Peter W. Halligan and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In clinical neuropsychiatry, case studies provide invaluable demonstrations of the range and types of unusual psychological states that can occur after brain damage. In the pursuit of objectivity and scientific respectability, however, many academic reports of neuropsychiatric disorders appear cold, contrived and impersonal. The essence and character of the patient's experience and behaviour is easily obscured or even lost - a fact that cannot help researchers, therapists and other practitioners to relate their conceptual knowledge to the flesh-and-blood people they meet in their professional lives. In practice, much of the actual discourse of such patients has been ignored as unworthy of scientific interest. This book describes real patients in a clear and jargon-free way. These cases should serve to reduce the discrepancy between the formal representations of psychiatric illness in the mainstream literature and the reality of people struggling to make sense of their own predicament in everyday life.

Download or read book Key Concepts in Mental Health written by David Pilgrim and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bestselling text provides a complete and concise overview of mental health and all the issues that surround it from a theoretical and practical perspective.

Download or read book Mad Studies Reader written by Bradley Lewis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-30 with total page 669 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on psychiatry, mental health care, and the cultural relations of mental difference. With particular focus on accounts of lived experience and readings that cover issues of epistemic and social injustice in mental health discourse, the Mad Studies Reader brings together voices that advance anti-sanist approaches to scholarship, practice, art, and activism in this realm. Beyond offering a theoretical and historical overview of mad studies, this Reader draws on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of artists, mad pride activists, humanities and social science scholars, and critical clinicians to explore the complexity of mental life and mental difference. Voices from these groups confront and challenge standard approaches to mental difference. They advance new structures of meaning and practice that are inclusive of those who have been systematically subjugated and promote anti-sanist approaches to counter inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination. Confronting modes of psychological oppression and the power of a few to interpret and define difference for so many, the Mad Studies Reader asks the critical question of how these approaches may be reconsidered, resisted, and reclaimed. This collection will be of interest to mental health clinicians; students and scholars of the arts, humanities and social sciences; and anyone who has been affected by mental difference, directly or indirectly, who is curious to explore new perspectives.

Download or read book Madness Heresy and the Rumor of Angels written by Seth Farber and published by Open Court Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of seven true stories of individuals insulted and injured by the mental health system, individuals who then fought back, broke free, and rebuilt their lives. Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels is a work in the tradition of Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, and Erving Goffman, a challenge to the delusional belief-system known as psychiatry, and a protest against its appalling crimes.

Download or read book Popular Music and the Myths of Madness written by Nicola Spelman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of opera, film, television, and literature have demonstrated how constructions of madness may be referenced in order to stigmatise but also liberate protagonists in ways that reinforce or challenge contemporaneous notions of normality. But to date very little research has been conducted on how madness is represented in popular music. In an effort to redress this imbalance, Nicola Spelman identifies links between the anti-psychiatry movement and representations of madness in popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, analysing the various ways in which ideas critical of institutional psychiatry are embodied both verbally and musically in specific songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, The Beatles, and Elton John. She concentrates on meanings that may be made at the point of reception as a consequence of ideas about madness that were circulating at the time. These ideas are then linked to contemporary conventions of musical expression in order to illustrate certain interpretative possibilities. Supporting evidence comes from popular musicological analysis - incorporating discourse analysis and social semiotics - and investigation of socio-historical context. The uniqueness of the period in question is demonstrated by means of a more generalised overview of songs drawn from a variety of styles and eras that engage with the topic of madness in diverse and often conflicting ways. The conclusions drawn reveal the extent to which anti-psychiatric ideas filtered through into popular culture, offering insights into popular music's ability to question general suppositions about madness alongside its potential to bring issues of men's madness into the public arena as an often neglected topic for discussion.

Download or read book The Madness of Epic written by Debra Hershkowitz and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 1998-06-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madness plays a vital role in many ancient epics: not only do characters go mad, but madness also often occupies a central thematic position in the texts. In this book, Debra Hershkowitz examines from a variety of theoretical angles the representation and poetic function of madness in Greek and Latin epic from Homer through the Flavians, including individual chapters devoted to the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lucan's Bellum Civile, and Statius' Thebaid. The study also addresses the difficulty of defining madness, and discusses how each epic explores this problem in a different way, finding its own unique way of conceptualizing madness. Epic madness interacts with ancient models of madness, but also, even more importantly, with previous representations of madness in the literary tradition. Likewise, the reader's response to epic madness is influenced by both ancient and modern views of madness, as well as by an awareness of intertextuality.

Download or read book Madness written by Mary de Young and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Madness" is, of course, personally experienced, but because of its intimate relationship to the sociocultural context, it is also socially constructed, culturally represented and socially controlled--all of which make it a topic rife for sociological analysis. Using a range of historical and contemporary textual material, this work exercises the sociological imagination to explore some of the most perplexing questions in the history of madness, including why some behaviors, thoughts and emotions are labeled mad while others are not; why they are labeled mad in one historical period and not another; why the label of mad is applied to some types of people and not others; by whom the label is applied, and with what consequences.

Download or read book Recollections of a Literary Life written by Maxime Du Camp and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The London Quarterly Review written by William Lonsdale Watkinson and published by . This book was released on 1856 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Literary Recollections written by Maxime Du Camp and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Unread Mind written by Morris Rosenberg and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, we have been intrigued and baffled by mental illness. Our confusion is nowhere more apparent than in the ways we have dealt with the mentally ill. We have tortured, exiled and burned them at the stake. Yet at other times we have supported, cared for and nurtured them. It is apparent that society has never quite known how to respond to the insane--whether to punish them for their acts or to pity them for their sickness. In an original look at the nature of mental illness and the distinction between sanity and insanity, Morris Rosenberg rejects most psychiatric, psychological and sociological theories. Instead, he defines insanity as "role-taking failure", the inability to grasp the thoughts and emotions of other human beings. According to Rosenberg, we characterize a person's ideas and behaviors as insane when we are unable to put ourselves in his place or to see the world through his eyes. If we can comprehend the reasons for a person's speech or action, we think of it as sane; if not, we consider it insane. He contends that it is society's confusion about the mentally ill, its inability to penetrate the unread mind, that actually defines mental illness. His radical thesis, that mental illness is characterized by society's response, not the individual's action, gives us a new way to look at a subject that has puzzled society for centuries.

Download or read book Demons of the Body and Mind written by Ruth Bienstock Anolik and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-07-26 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The sixteen critical essays in this collection examine the ways in which those suffering from mental and physical ailments were refigured as Other during the Gothic era, and how they were imagined to be monstrous. Together, the essays highlight the Gothic inclination to represent all ailments as visibly monstrous, such as mental illness, which were invisible"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Condition of Madness written by Brian W. Grant and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Condition of Madness provides a comprehensive philosophical explanation of the conceptual assumptions in psychiatry. Brian Grant begins this work with a historical overview of psychiatry and a discussion of the prevalent views in the contemporary discipline. He then critically examines DSM-IV and argues that the taxonomical categories presently used in psychiatry are almost entirely arbitrary. The book draws on the philosophy of mind and provides discussions of the mind, the self, the will, and madness. It concludes with recommendations on how to view psychiatry and explores what the future holds for the discipline.

Download or read book Visits to Bedlam Madness and Literature in the Eighteenth Century written by Max Byrd and published by Columbia : University of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: