Social Order/Mental Disorder

Anglo-American Psychiatry in Historical Perspective

Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Psychology, History, Mental Health
Cover of the book Social Order/Mental Disorder by Andrew Scull, Taylor and Francis
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Andrew Scull ISBN: 9780429850363
Publisher: Taylor and Francis Publication: September 24, 2018
Imprint: Routledge Language: English
Author: Andrew Scull
ISBN: 9780429850363
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Publication: September 24, 2018
Imprint: Routledge
Language: English

Social Order/Mental Disorder represents a provocative and exciting exploration of social response to madness in England and the United States from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Scull, who is well-known for his previous work in this area, examines a range of issues, including the changing social meanings of madness, the emergence and consolidation of the psychiatric profession, the often troubled relationship between psychiatry and the law, the linkages between sex and madness, and the constitution, character, and collapse of the asylum as our standard response to the problems posed by mental disorder.

This book is emphatically not part of the venerable tradition of hagiography that has celebrated psychiatric history as a long struggle in which the steady application of rational-scientific principles has produced irregular but unmistakable evidence of progress toward humane treatments for the mentally ill. In fact, Scull contends that traditional mental hospitals, for much of their existence, resembled cemeteries for the still breathing, medical hubris having at times served to license dangerous, mutilating, even life-threatening experiments on the dead souls confined therein. He argues that only the sociologically blind would deny that psychiatrists are deeply involved in the definition and identification of what constitutes madness in our world – hence, claims that mental illness is a purely naturalistic category, somehow devoid of contamination by the social, are taken to be patently absurd. Scull points out, however, that the commitment to examine psychiatry and its ministrations with a critical eye by no means entails the romantic idea that the problems it deals with are purely the invention of the professional mind, or the Manichean notion that all psychiatric interventions are malevolent and ill-conceived. It is the task of unromantic criticism that is attempted in this book.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Social Order/Mental Disorder represents a provocative and exciting exploration of social response to madness in England and the United States from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Scull, who is well-known for his previous work in this area, examines a range of issues, including the changing social meanings of madness, the emergence and consolidation of the psychiatric profession, the often troubled relationship between psychiatry and the law, the linkages between sex and madness, and the constitution, character, and collapse of the asylum as our standard response to the problems posed by mental disorder.

This book is emphatically not part of the venerable tradition of hagiography that has celebrated psychiatric history as a long struggle in which the steady application of rational-scientific principles has produced irregular but unmistakable evidence of progress toward humane treatments for the mentally ill. In fact, Scull contends that traditional mental hospitals, for much of their existence, resembled cemeteries for the still breathing, medical hubris having at times served to license dangerous, mutilating, even life-threatening experiments on the dead souls confined therein. He argues that only the sociologically blind would deny that psychiatrists are deeply involved in the definition and identification of what constitutes madness in our world – hence, claims that mental illness is a purely naturalistic category, somehow devoid of contamination by the social, are taken to be patently absurd. Scull points out, however, that the commitment to examine psychiatry and its ministrations with a critical eye by no means entails the romantic idea that the problems it deals with are purely the invention of the professional mind, or the Manichean notion that all psychiatric interventions are malevolent and ill-conceived. It is the task of unromantic criticism that is attempted in this book.

More books from Taylor and Francis

Cover of the book The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Ibn al-Haytham's On the Configuration of the World by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Developing Citizenship in Schools by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Effective In-Class Support by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book The Press Clause and Digital Technology's Fourth Wave by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Thou Shalt Not Kill Unless Otherwise Instructed: Poems and Stories by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Town Planning into the 21st Century by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Oppositional Discourses and Democracies by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book The Developing Individual in a Changing World by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Diary of A Deputy by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Regulating the Night by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Imaginings of Time in Lydgate and Hoccleve's Verse by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Victory: How a Progressive Democratic Party Can Win the Presidency by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Faces of Women and Aging by Andrew Scull
Cover of the book Conservative Socialism by Andrew Scull
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy