Allan Horwitz: 8 books

Scholars question the extent to which current psychiatric classification systems are inadequate for diagnosis, treatment, and research of mental disorders and offer suggestions for improvement. In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including...

Since the emergence of Western philosophy and science among the classical Greeks, debates have raged over the relative significance of biology and culture on an individual's behavior. Today, recent advances in genetics and biological science have pushed most scholars past the tired nature vs. nurture...

Post-traumatic stress disorder—and its predecessor diagnoses, including soldier’s heart, railroad spine, and shell shock—was recognized as a psychiatric disorder in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The psychic impacts of train crashes, wars, and sexual shocks among children first drew...

More people today report feeling anxious than ever before—even while living in relatively safe and prosperous modern societies. Almost one in five people experiences an anxiety disorder each year, and more than a quarter of the population admits to an anxiety condition at some point in their lives....

Thirty years ago, it was estimated that less than five percent of the population had an anxiety disorder. Today, some estimates are over fifty percent, a tenfold increase. Is this dramatic rise evidence of a real medical epidemic? In All We Have to Fear, Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield argue that...

Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives. Warnings that depressive disorder is a leading cause of worldwide disability have been accompanied by...

Quand on a fait de la tristesse une maladie… Critique du diagnostic de la dépressionCe livre dresse une critique rigoureuse de la manière dont la psychiatrie américaine a réformé, dans les années 1980, le diagnostic de la dépression. Selon les auteurs, le diagnostic actuel de la dépression...

‘Writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture,' observed TheloniousMonk. It's possibly one of the few times he was wrong. Jazz poetry is almostas old as jazz itself. Poets such as Thulani Davis, Langston Hughes and ourown Keorapetse Kgositsile and Mongane Wally Serote have long heard thepatterns...