Source URL: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/kgergen1/Psychodiagnostics/biblio.html
I took the liberty of copying this page to my website. The html within the page was not operating correctly so in order to have a functionally linking bibliography, some fixing was called for. Credit for this bibliography belongs with Dr. Kenneth Gergen, Swarthmore College.
Psychodiagnosis in Question
A Brief Overview
I. The Problematic Foundations of Diagnosis
A. The Social Construction of Mental Illness
B. Arbitrary Categories
C. Vague Formulations
D. Validity Issues
II. The Cultural and Historical Relativity of Diagnosis
III. The Politics of Diagnosis
A. Diagnosis as Professionally Self Serving
B. Power, Social Control and Diagnostics
a. General Analysis
b. Gender Bias
c. Ethnic and Racial Biases
d. Socioeconomic Bias
C. Psychiatry and the Construction of Selfhood
D. Religion and Psychiatry
IV. Effects of Diagnosis on Clients, Communities
and Culture
A. Creation of Stereotypes
B. Deficit Labelling
C. Bias Toward Psychopharmacology
V. Expansion of Diagnostics
VI. Ex Mental Patients Responses
VII. Alternatives to Diagnosis
VIII. Alternative Treatments
I. The Problematic Foundations of Diagnosis
A. The Social Construction of Mental Illness
Boyer, Robert. R.D. Laing and Anti-Psychiatry. Skidmore, New York:
Skidmore College Press, 1971. A Collection of essays by, commentaries
on and interviews with R.D. Laing, a noted Psychiatrist. Laing was a
believer in psychiatry but not "disease models" or
traditional, discrete Diagnostics. He preferred to see patients as
presenting with personality disturbances, problems with
"organization," brought on in combination with
environmental stressors.
Brandt, Anthony. Reality Police. New York: Morrow and Co. 1985. A
discussion of the ways in which social standards for behavior are
defined into psychiatric normality and the way that concept of the
normal is enforced on the general populace by psychiatrists, society
, and the law.
Conrad, Peter. Deviance and Medicalization: from Badness to Sickness.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. A book focussing on how
mental"illness" as a medical entity has been constructed
and the ways in which this construction depoliticizes an otherwise
clearly subjective assessment of the normal.
Daniels, Arlene K. "The Social Construction of Psychiatric
Diagnosis." In H. Drezel, ed. Recent Sociology No. 2. New York:
Macmillan, 1970. A paper discussing the ways in which deviance is
controlled via the construction of
diagnostic criteria defining said behavior as mental illness. Author
looks at the construction and attribution of diagnostics in the
military because of this subculture's rigid and documented set of
norms and mores.
Denzin, Norman K. and Stephan R. Spitzer. The Mental Patient --
Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.
1968. A wide ranging text-book discussing mental illness not as a
medical diagnosis but as a label ascribed to certain people as a
result of arbitrary cultural categories for certain deviant behavior.
Chapters analyze the derivations of these categories as well as the
effects they have on the individual and society.
Dunham, H. Warren. Sociological Theory and Mental Disorder. Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1959.
Farber, Seth. Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels: the Revolt
against the Mental Health Care System. Chicago: Open Court Publishing
Co., 1993. A collection and analysis of seven case studies of people
diagnosed with chronic and debilitating mental illnesses who later
came to see their "illness" as an expansion of
possibilities. Author explores implications of this idea for
psychodiagnostics and drug therapy.
Farber, Seth. "Transcending Medicalism." Journal of Mind
and Behavior v. 8(1) (Win 1987) pp. 105-132. An argument that
psychiatric diagnostics are internally flawed and anti-therapeutic.
Author argues for a more culturally informed conception of mental
problems beginning from an understanding of these entities not as an
epidemic but as a sign of human change and evolution.
Foucault, Michel. Mental Illness and Psychology. Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1987. An early work by a very
influential French philosopher in which he critiques psychology's
view of the human -- as an entity whose workings can be understood as
a system, and which can equally well be fixed when something is
broken. Author argues that there is no essential "human
nature," thus there can be no malfunction in the state of being human.
Gross, Martin C. The Psychological Society: A Critical Analysis of
Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and the Psychological
Revolution. New York: Random House, 1978. An examination of the
negative repercussions of many of the underlying concepts guiding the
mental health professions. Examination includes discussion of
the importance of setting a boundary between normal and ill, locating
mental health problems within individuals, and the concomitant belief
that individuals must rely on professionals to assess their emotional
state and "decide" whether they are normal or in need of
treatment. Author suggests that problems in society result from the
very concepts of psychological and psychiatric distress.
Horwitz, Allan. The Social Control of Mental Illness. New York:
Academy Press, 1984. A synthesis of the perspectives of sociology,
anthropology and history in considering the question of mental
illness and its relationship
to culture. Authors discuss the changing meaning of mental illness,
how it is constructed how it is assigned, by whom, why, and how it is
responded to and/or treated. At the core of discussion is the
question of why is one society's prophet another's lunatic.
Kiev, Ari, ed. Magic, Faith and Healing . New York: Free Press, 1974.
A far ranging set of articles discussing the healing practices of
non-western and often third world countries and how these cultures
conceptualize and
treat "mental illness." Editor focusses interest on the
argument that witch, shaman, and psychiatrist all draw most of their
power to cure from the status accorded to them by their respective
societies as healers, and not from any
particular element of "truth" in their culture's conception
or treatment.
Kirmayer, Laurence J. "Improvisation and Authority in Illness
Meaning." Culture Medicine and Psychiatry , v.
18, (Dec. 1994), p. 183-209. A discussion of the role played by
interpretation of meaning in the creation and treatment of mental
illness. Author sees interpretation as fundamental to mental
health care, and sees a constant interplay between the authoritative
diagnosis and the meanings created in the therapeutic alliance as an
important area for thought and study.
Lebra, William P. Culture Bound Syndromes. Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1976. A collection of paper's theorizing syndromes that
are found only in certain societies -- including our own -- and how
treatments other than modern psychiatry are effective in treating
both these syndromes as a well as problems oft observed in the West.
Modrow, John. How to Become a Schizophrenic: The Case Against
Biological Psychiatry. Everett, WA.: Apollyon Press, 1995. Author
argues that biological psychiatry is an inappropriate means towards
helping schizophrenic patients because it obviates the possibility of
understanding their worlds. It is the author's position that without
that understanding, it is impossible to help people with schizophrenia.
Moerman, Daniel E. et al eds. The Anthropology of Medicine: From
Culture to Method. New York: Bergin and Garvey, 1991.
Macsween, Morag. Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and Sociological
Perspective on Eating Disorders. New York:
Routledge, 1993. A discussion of Anorexia Nervosa as a socially
constructed concept rather than an empirically based "medical
diagnosis." Author highlights the role played by cultural
construction of gender and the body in the symptom formation and
evaluation of this concept as disease.
Pallone, Nathaniel J. On the Social Utility of Psychopathology: a
Deviant Majority and its Keepers? New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction
Books, 1986. A collection of essays discussing the social functions
of the DSM,
seeing it as a dogmaticization of the "good life" and
depicting treatment as a method for enforcing psychiatric -- and
dominant social -- ideology.
Parsons, Anne. Belief, Magic, and Anomie: Essays in Psychosocial
Anthropology. New York: Free Press, 1969. A series of articles
discussing the formation of belief in different cultures and groups
and relating this analysis of the subjective to the psychological and
psychiatric concepts of normality.
Pfohl, Stephen J. Predicting Dangerousness : the Social Construction
of Psychiatric Reality. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978. An
empirical study and critical analysis of the way psychiatrists assess
the "inner psychic lives" of mental patients. Study focuses
on the lack of valid criteria for doctor's diagnosis, particularly
with respect to the assertion of " a danger to others and/or
himself" which would warrant involuntary hospitalization.
Price, Richard H and Bruce Denner and Richard H. Price, comp. The
Making of a Mental Patient. New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston,
1973. A series of articles discussing the process of identification,
diagnosis, and eventual commitment to a mental institution. Articles
discuss the stages in a mental patient's life chronologically,
pointing out the effects of this process on society and upon the
individual lives of people diagnosed with mental
illness and entered into the system.
Rogers, Rex Stanton. "The Psychologization of narrating hard
times.'" Studia Psychologica v. 37(3) (1995), pp. 180-182. An
argument that psychology has become so entrenched in 20th century
culture that people now narrate their difficulties as psychological
problems rather than as life. Author suggests that there are no
transcendent' behaviors to be quantified by psychology, and the
medical model is therefore an inappropriate and domineering
system for encoding and treating the human.
Scull, Andrew. Social Order/ Mental Disorder. London: Routledge,
1989. An historically based discussion of the ways in which
psychiatrists function as "the community screen;" that is,
as experts who define and diagnose
deviance as illness, thereby shielding society from its own
prejudices and keeping in place a given social order.
Scheff, Thomas J. Mental Illness and Social Process. New York: Harper
and Row, 1967. A collection of papers discussing how social processes
shape the definition of mental illness and analyzing society's
response to that conception.
Sedgewick, Peter. Psycho Politics. New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
Commentary on selected readings by Laing, Foucault, Goffman, and
Szasz. Chapters focus on "Mental Illness" as a Socially
Constructed Icon, and the social impact and import of medicalization
in mental health.
Silverstein, Harry. The Social Control of Mental Illness. New
York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1968. An anthology of
interdisciplinary texts exploring the functions of the psychiatrist
and mental patient in society and in the
asylum. Authors focus on why society's labels certain behaviors as
illness and how labels function to reify themselves.
Siegler, Miriam. Models of Madness, Models of Medicine. New York:
Macmillan, 1974. An outline of a number if models of mental illness
and an analysis of the stereotypes they embrace and propagate in society.
Szasz, Thomas. Law, Liberty and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the
Social Use of Mental Health Practices. New York: Collier Books, 1972.
An analysis of the political and moral basis of diagnostic categories
and the way these
diagnoses serve to reify existing social taboos and enforce social
norms in the name of mental health.
Szasz, Thomas S. Ideology and Insanity. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Co., 1970. A Collection of Essays discussing
"Mental Illness," stemming from the premise
that"psychiatric terms are inadequate and
unsatisfactory, for each neglects, or deflects attention from the
essentially moral and political " character of such categories.
Weitz, Don. "Schizophrenia, Exploding the Myth." Issues in
Radical Therapy v..11(4) (1985), pp. 10-13. An inquiry into the
historic development of the diagnosis of schizophrenia as an umbrella
term for unwanted behavior. Author also attempts to expose the lack
of empirical support for the diagnosis and critiques the diagnostic criteria.
Widom, Kathy S. Sex Roles and Psychopathology. New York: Plenum
Press, 1984. An examination of the ways in which sex roles and
cultural produced gender biases affect the " development,
manifestation, and maintenance of abnormal behavior" and the
impact of these biases on the construction and assessment of
psychopathology.
Wing, J.K. Reasoning About Madness. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978. An analysis of the ways in which the scientific method
has been inappropriately applied to schizophrenia and other
"social problems" to make them medical entities. Discussion
also includes a section on alternatives to the medical model of
mental illness.
.
B. Arbitrary Categories
Addison, Wesley. They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful
Psychiatrists Decide Who is Normal. Reading, Massachusetts: 1995.
Bean, Philip. Mental Illness: Changes and Trends. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1983. A collection of interdisciplinary articles
discussing various and varied issues in mental health, including the
difficulty of a "scientific" psychiatry, and the effects of
diagnosis on patients, and a fleshing out of the difficulties implied
by finding a definition for normality.
Bentall, Richard P. "A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a
Psychiatric Disorder." Journal of Modern Ethics v. 18
(1992), pp. 94-98.
Channabasavanna, S. M. "Ethnography of Psychiatric Illness: a
Pilot Study." NIMHANS-Journal v. 11(1) (1993), pp. 1-10.
Denzin, op. cit.
Foucault, op. cit.
Horwitz,op. cit.
Japenga, Ann. "Rewriting the Dictionary of Madness; Is the DSM a
Work of Science or Just a List of Dangerous Labels." Los Angeles
Times: June 5, 1994, v. 113.
Kirk, Stuart A. The Selling of the DSM: the Rhetoric of Science in
Psychiatry. New York: A. de Gruyter, 1992. "The Selling of DSM
is a well-documented expose of the pretense that psychiatric
diagnoses are the names of
genuine diseases and of the authentification of this fraud by an
unholy alliance of the media, the government, and psychiatry."
-- Thomas Szasz.
Kleinman, Arthur. Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to
Personal Experience. New York: Free Press, 1988. An
Anthropological discussion of cross-cultural perspectives of
psychiatric problems. Author holds that such an analysis leads to a
theoretical emphasis on the subjective assessment of mental illness
as social production rather than on the biomedical aspects of these entities.
Mazzoni, Cristine. Saint Hysteria: Neurosis, Mysticism and Gender in
European Culture. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996. A
discussion of the division between the neurotic and the saint. Author
proposes through historical analysis that no such division can truly
be made. As said elsewhere, one epoch's psychotic is another's prophet.
Offer, Daniel and Sabshin, Melvin eds. The Diversity of Normal
Behavior : Further Contributions to Normatology. New York: Basic
Books, 1991. A compilation of articles examining the definition of
normality from different theoretical and professional
perspectives. Although written from a decidedly
clinical/psychiatric perspective, these
articles clarify and examine many of the key issues in the debate
over psychiatric conceptions of illness, health, and abnormality.
Pallone, op. cit.
Plog, Stanley C. and Robert B. Edgeton, eds. Changing Perspectives in
Mental Illness. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. A
collection of essays examining "The Scientific Status of the
Mental Illness Metaphor" and the role and implications of
diagnostics in treatment and society.
Radden, Jennifer. Madness and Reason. London: G. Allen and Unwin,
1985. An attempt to invalidate both medical and dominant social views
of madness as conceptually and practically flawed, and then propone a
move back to an older conception of madness as a lack of reason.
Ross, Colin A. and Alvin Pam. Psudoscience in Biological Psychiatry:
Blaming the Body. New York: Wiley and Sons, 1995. A discussion of the
many and varied errors in conception and fact that have developed as
a result of the unacknowledged interplay between psychiatric science
and cultural biases. Although authors eventually argue for a more
"scientific" approach to biological psychiatry -- rather
than a complete redefinition -- the insight presented into the often
fraudulant and dangerous practice of psychiatric research is instructive.
Skodol, Andrew E. et al eds. International Perspectives of DSM
III. Washington D.C. : American Psychiatric Press, 1983. A
collection of essays by psychiatrists around the world. Though
written in an effort to edit and improve diagnostic systems,
contributions highlight a number of the biases in American Psychiatry
as well as the arbitrary character of a number of diagnoses.
Szasz, Thomas Stephen. Insanity: the Idea and Its Consequences. New
York: Wiley, 1987. An attempt to invalidate the medical model of
mental illness and to point out reasons why the model has become so
widely accepted. Authors also focuses on the social implication of
that acceptance.
C. Vague Formulations
Beahrs, John O. Limits of Scientific Psychiatry: The Role of
Uncertainty in Mental Health . New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1986. Although
written primarily in support of psychiatric practice, the author
discusses the ways in which Psychiatry holds to many of the
simplistic and inappropriate presumptions of causality borrowed from the
scientific method and classical mechanics. Author seeks to show that
psychiatry's current formulation oversteps its ability to explain
because there is no room for uncertainty and ambiguity in diagnostic criteria.
Bean, op. cit.
Bures, Zbynek and Ondrej Kondas. "Pitfalls and Perspectives of
Psychodiagnosis." Studia Psychologica v.35(2) (1993), pp. 195-203.
Cooper, J. E. Psychiatric Diagnosis in New York and London: a
Comparative study of Mental Hospital Admissions. London: Oxford
University Press, 1972. Study showing large differences among patient
populations admitted to hospitals in U.S. and Great Britain.
Researchers seek to show that disparities result from differences in
assessment and diagnosis rather than differences in symptom presentation.
Dumont, Matthew P. "The Non-specificity of Mental
Illness." The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry v. 54
(1984), pp. 326-34. A discussion of the ways in which traditional
diagnostic procedures with concrete distinctions between illness and
wellness might be holding back a fuller understanding of the human
and how to help and understand mental problems. Author discusses the
philosophical underpinnings of this issue in western thought, and
suggests the need for a "paradigm shift" in the
conceptualization of mental illness.
Katz, M.M. "Non-specificity of Diagnosis of Paranoid
Schizophrenia." Archives of General Psychiatry v. 11 (1964), pp.
197-202. A study designed to show that even when the diagnosis of
schizophrenia is agreed upon by a number of psychiatrists operating
independently, pt.'s so diagnosed still present with very different
problems . The diagnosis of schizophrenia, then, means little with
regard to onset, etiology or treatment.
Lewis, Michael. "Many Minds Make Madness: Judgement Under
Uncertainty and Certainty." Psychological Inquiry v. 3(2) .
Miriam, Azaunce. "Is it Schizophrenia or Spirit Possession."
Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless v.4(3) (1995), pp.255-263.
Offer, Daniel and Sabshin, Melvin eds., op. cit.
Plog, Stanley C. and Robert B. Edgeton, eds., op. cit.
Sadler, John Z. et al. Philosophical Perspectives on Psychiatric
Diagnostic Classification . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1994. A collection of essays discussing essential problems in
and barriers to the
construction of system of diagnostics in psychiatry. Authors also
discuss specific problems and biases embedded in the DSM IV and ICD.
Sarbin, Theodore. " Schizophrenia is a Myth Born of Metaphor,
Meaninglessness." Psychology Today (June, 1972), p.18. A
discussion of the way the diagnosis of schizophrenia has become a
myth, a reified metaphor that has no clinical use or scientific
value. Author argues this point via both historical analysis and
empirical study.
Sass, Louis A. "`My so-called Delusions': Solipsism, Madness and
the Schreber Case. Special Issue: Phenomenology and
Schizophrenia." Journal of Phenomenolgical Psychology v.
25(1) (1994), pp. 70- 103.
Silverman, Irwin. Pure Types are Rare: Myths and Meanings of Madness.
New York: Praegar, 1994. A discussion of mental illness and
psychiatric diagnostics as icons constructed to exercise social
control over problematic populations for the good of the larger
society and not for the individual sufferer. Author reformulated
madness as an oblique but explicable response to conflict, real or
imagined, internal or external.
D. Validity Issues
Ash, P. "The Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis. "
Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology v. 44 (1949), pp. 272-276. A
study focussing on three psychiatrists and the degree to which they
disagreed on diagnosis of the same patients. Study focussed on a
number of variables including the seriousness of pathology and the
interaction between these variables and consistency. Results show a
very low percentage of consistent diagnoses for all
three doctors.
Barbour, Allen B. Caring for Patients: a Critique of the Medical
Model. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1995. An
attempt to relegate the medical model of illness to at least a less
primary role in the conceptualization and
treatment of problems. Author argues that "when applied without
perspective" the medical model and discrete diagnostics are
invalid, and that "a better understanding of the relation of the
illness to the life of the patient" can obviate many of the
problems the model otherwise incurs. Book is a careful analysis that
highlights many of the key issues, though ultimately settling for a
reframing rather than a rethinking of the medical model.
Bean, op. cit.
Beahrs, op. cit.
Beck, A.T. et al. "Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis."
American Journal of Psychiatry v. 119 (October), pp. 351-357. A
research study assessing the degree of diagnostic agreement among 4
psychiatrists diagnosing patients in an inpatient facility. Results
showed a level of concordance of 54%, high enough to be clearly
non-random, but low enough to raise questions about the utility of
diagnostics as a treatment or research tool.
Bolton, Derek. Mind ,Meaning and Mental Disorder: the Nature of
Causal Explanation in Psychology and Psychiatry. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996. A philosophical analysis of the
question of how best to explain and treat human behavior, and a
concurrent discussion of the implications of that argument for the
theory and practice of psychiatry. Author argues that the key issue
in this discussion is the question of whether abnormal behavior can
be explained as "non-intentional," the result of a
malfunction in normal psychological and/or biological functioning.
Author argues that such an explanation is difficult to uphold.
Brown, Phil. " The Name Game."Journal of Mind and Behavior
v.11(3-4) (Sum-Fal 1990), pp. 385-406. An analysis of the essential
empirical failures of psychiatric diagnosis and the biases and flaws
of the system. Author also discusses the ways in which psychiatry
dominates mental health and how this domination is passed on to
patient. Author argues that a more comprehensive understanding of
mental problems may be gained from "a sociology of
diagnosis" that takes into account these key features.
Breggin, Peter. Toxic Psychiatry. New York: Saint Martin's Press,
1991. A wide-ranging discussion of the validity of various
psychiatric diagnoses and the ethical, moral, and empirical value of
psychiatric treatment for these
problems.
Bullough, Vern. "Is Homosexuality an Illness." Humanist
(Nov/Dec, 1974), pp.27-30.
Dawber, Thomas. "Unproved Hypothesis." New England Journal
of Medicine v. 299 (1978), p. 455.
Dawes Robyn M. House of Cards: Psychology and Psychiatry Built on
Myth . New York: Macmillan International, 1984. Discussion
criticizing many aspects of psychological assessment for their
unscientific basis and feigned objectivity.
Dumont,"The Non-specificity of Mental Illness," op. cit.
Farber, Seth. Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels, op.cit.
Fisher, Walter, et al. Power , Greed and Stupidity in the Mental
Health Racket. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973. An argument
that the medical model is inappropriate as ascribed to deviant
behavior, and that this model -- a result of greed, power and
incompetence among mental health professionals -- needs to be cased
out in favor of a more socially sensitive theoretical frame.
Gove, Walter R. The Labelling of Deviance. Beverly Hills, California:
Sage Publications, 1980. A set of essays discussing labelling theory,
the evolution of psychiatric diagnostics, the difficulty of making
"accurate diagnoses, and some reasons to be skeptical of
psychiatry as a self-aware entity.
Hall, Beverly A. "The Psychiatric model: a critical
analysis." Advances in Nursing Science v. 18 (3) (March 1996),
pp. 16-26. An examination of the ways in which the medical model and
diagnostics serve to disempower and control patients rather than help
them. The focus of the article is on the ways in which psychiatric
treatment and particularly nursing is adversely effected by
diagnostics and what values need to be recognized and reified over
"objectivity" in mental health care.
Johnstone, Lucy. Users and Abusers of Psychiatry: A Critical Look at
Traditional Psychiatric Practice. New York: Routledge, 1989. A series
of case studies and concurrent analysis examining the problems that
all arise in treatment
based on the medical model. Author also analyzes the evolution of
psychiatry, diagnostics, and psychopharmacology.
Katz, op. cit.
Kick, H. "Anti-psychiatry and the crisis of self-conception in
psychiatry" Fortschritte der Neurilogie -Psychiatrie v. 58 (10)
(Oct. 1990), pp. 367-74. "Describes the history and concerns of
the antipsychiatry movement and considers its consequences for the
medical model of mental disorders and for conceptualizations of the
role of the psychiatrist." -- PsychInfo Data Base.
Leifer, Ronald. In the Name of Mental Health:. New York: Science
House, 1969. An attempt to both describe the underlying political
meaning and functions of the medical model of mental illness and to
recast the role of psychiatrists in society as something other than
"physicians who diagnose, treat, and prevent metal illness."
Mehlman, B. "The Reliability of Psychiatric Diagnosis."
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology v. 47 (1952), pp. 577-578. A
study showing that individual psychiatrists have individualized
patterns of diagnosis which vary from psychiatrist to psychiatrist.
This indicates the degree to which subjectivity enters into diagnosis
even at the level of implementation, much less formulation.
Miller, Milton H. If the Patient is You: Psychiatry Inside-Out. New
York : Scribner, 1977.
Nunokawa, Walther D. Human Values and Abnormal
Behavior. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1965.
A collection of essays discussing the boundary between the normal and
the abnormal and how
this boundary is policed by a cooperation between psychiatry and the law.
Offer, Daniel. Normality and the Life Cycle : a Critical Integration.
New York: Basic Books, 1984. An examination of the concept of
normality and the changes that occur therein through various stages
in what the authors see as the human life cycle. Authors ultimately
question whether biology , sociology, and psychology can
be used in their current incarnation to justify a concept of
normality where "the known can be separated from the valued"
and discuss the implications of this observations for the above disciplines.
Pfohl, op. cit.
Plog, Stanley C. and Robert B. Edgeton, eds., op. cit.
Quinton, Anthony. "Homosexuality;" in Philosophy,
Psychology and Psychiatry, by A. Philips Griffiths. New York:
Press Syndicate of Caimbridge (1994), pp.213- 239. Article discusses
the implications and fallacies implied by diagnosing homosexuality as
a biological dysfunction or illness. Quinton does a precise job of
articulating the ways in which diagnostics can and does cloak moral
and political judgements of deviance in the garb of medical entities.
Radden, op. cit.
Rosencrance, John. "Compulsive Gambling and the Medicalization
of Deviance." Social Problems v.32(3) (Feb.
1985), pp. 275-284. An argument that treatment programs based on the
addictions model of behavior and on the labelling of individuals as
"pathological" are inaccurate, based on a
non-representative group of cases who believe they have a problem.
Author argues that the resulting conception is more political than
scientific, having achieved acceptance by virtue of its moral sense
and not by empirical support.
Reznek, Lawrie. The Nature of Disease. New York: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1987. An inquiry into the concept of disease. Author
engages both medical and psychiatric diagnoses with the intention of
determining what is objective evaluation of an existing condition and
what is descriptive, biased analysis of behavior, habit and thought.
Rogers, op. cit.
Rosenhan, D. L. "On Being Sane in Insane Places." Science,
January 19, 1973, pp. 250-278.
Ross, op. cit.
Sadler, op. cit.
Sarbin, op. cit.
Saubidet, Roberto O. "What is Healing?" Acta Psiquiatrica y
Psicologica de America Latina, 34(2), pp. 109-112. "Discusses
the concept of cure' in mental disease, emphasizing the long term
sequalae of mental illness. With mental diseases, the only means of
evaluating the degree of healing or rehabilitation achieved is by
studying the patient for pathognomic signs. Implications for medical
model are noted." -- PsychINFO database, 1990.
Scull, Andrew, ed. Madhouses , Mad-doctors, and Madmen: the
Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. A compilation of papers
discussing mental health in the Victorian age. The collection
highlights the historically prominent struggle over the legitimacy of
psychiatry and the concept of psychiatric "Illness."
Shader, R. I. et al. "Biasing Factors in Diagnosis and
Disposition." Comprehensive Psychiatry v. 10 (1969), pp. 81-9.
Smead, Valerie S. "Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimarexia, and
Bulimia." Women and Therapy v.2(1) (Spr. 1983), pp.19-35. An
examination of the ways in which diagnostics are inaccurate and
countertherapeutic in their assessment of women with eating
disorders. Author asserts that labelling effects and the importance
of discrete
symptoms lead to inaccurate understandings of particular cases as
well as individual and group responses to the diagnosis. Author also
emphasizes the social implications of blaming the individual for
socially derived -- but deviant -- behavior.
Svensson, Tommy. On the Notion of Mental Illness . Aldershot,
England: Avebury Publishing Co., 1995. An inquiry into the validity
and importance of the criticisms that have been voiced against the
medical model of mental illness. Article reviews much of the
significant literature from the 60's and 70's in moving toward the
conclusion that the issue of validity is far from settled and
requires further thought.
Szasz, Thomas S. "Mental Illness is Still a Myth."
Society v. 31(4) (1994), pp. 34-9. A fairly recent article by
one of the most influential anti-psychiatric thinkers of the past 50
years. Author discusses his major theoretical stances, including the
socio/political derivation of diagnostics. Author also describes
changes that have occurred in the past 40 years in psychiatry's
treatment of the mentally ill as a result of the anti-psychiatric movement.
Teigen, Karl H. "From Fallacies and Illusions to Heuristics and
Biases." In Basic Issues in Psychology. Forlag,
Sigma. Soreidgrend, Norway: Publisher Unknown, 1989.
Torrey, E. Fuller. The Death of Psychiatry. Radnor,
Pennsylvania: Chilton Book Co. 1974. An attack on psychiatry as
an emperor fully decked out in the finest nonexistent threads. Author
attempts to invalidate the medical model, diagnostics, and diagnostic
tests; and then articulate an alternative conception.
Trafford, Abigail. "Putting Mental Illness on a Par With the
Physical?" The Washington Post. May, 1996 v.119, n. 15: p. WH6, col.
Van Praag, Herman M. Make Believes in Psychiatry . New
York: Bruner/Mazel, 1993. A critical analysis of some of the
foundations of psychiatry -- including empiricism and the medical
model -- and a call to move toward an acceptance of the
"subjective" elements which do and must exist in any
science of the human.
Wade, Terence C. "Biopsychiatric attacks on Women." Women
and Therapy, v.16(1) (1995), pp. 143-61. A wide ranging paper
attacking psychiatry's tendency to pathologize women and attempt to
exorcise them of immoral behavior via medication and medicalized
methods of social control. Author confronts therapists, expounds on
the lack of empirical support for the medical model, and calls for a
reconceptualization of mental illness with an eye toward correcting
for the power imbalance reified and enforced by psychiatry.
Ward, Colleen A. Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health: a
Cross Cultural Perspective. Beverly Hills California: Sage
Productions, 1988.
Wing, op. cit.
Return to Contents
II. The Cultural and Historical Relativity of Diagnosis
Castel, Robert. The Regulation of Madness. Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1988. A discussion
of the psychiatric establishment in France and its close ties to the
state. Author attempts to document the ways in which psychiatry was
formed and functions to control undesirables under the guise of
medicine without formal sanctioning from the people.
Donnelly, Michael. Managing the Mind: a Study of Medical Psychology
in Early Nineteenth Century Britain. London: 1983. A discussion of
the beginnings of psychiatry in the "medical psychology" of
19th century Britain. Author argues that cultural currents of the
time accorded particular importance to the "medical," and
it was as a direct result of this prestige that the categories of
insanity and even the modern concept of "insanity" itself
was created.
Gamwell, Lynn. Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions
of Mental Illness Before 1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1995. An examination of the ways in which cultural
preoccupations informed and were reified in the early development
of American psychiatry in the period directly following World
War One.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man . New York, 1981.
Grob, Gerald N. Mental Illness and American Society. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1983. An historical account of Psychiatry
and Mental Health as a political and professional movement rather
than its avowed growth as a scientific enterprise moving toward
proper care for "ill" patients.
Gross, op. cit.
Jimenez, Mary Ann. Changing Faces of Madness. A
sociological/anthropological examination of the changes in cultural
representation and treatment of "madness" in Massachusetts
from 1700 to 1840.
Masson, Moussaieff, J. (compiled by). A Dark Science : Women
Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986. A compilation of 19th century journal
articles discussing treatment and diagnosis of several illnesses of
the period which can be seen as enactments of eroticized misogyny.
Author believes these articles to be instructive as documenting the
historically prominent attempts of male dominated society to
construct and dominate the female psyche while discounting women's
pain and experience.
Mazzoni, op. cit.
McGovern, Constance M. Masters of Madness: Social Origins of the
American Psychiatric Profession. Hanover, New Hampshire: University
Press of New England, 1985. An historical analysis of the origins of
the American Asylum and Psychiatric profession, the central theme of
which is that the Psychiatric establishment was built not on
"truth," but on the personal ambitions of the men who
created, marketed, and performed American Psychiatry.
Micale, Mark S. Discovering the History of Psychiatry. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994. An examination of the ways in which
histories of psychiatry can be seen as themselves constructions and
an exploration of the ways inwhich psychiatry and historiography are
inextricably linked to socio-political ideologies.
Parsons, op. cit.
Porter, Roy. Mind Forged Manacles. Caimbridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1987. A history of madness in England --
restoration to regency -- focussing on the evolution of the concept
of mental illness, the coincident arrival of the asylum and the
psychiatrist, and the relationship between these three entities.
Ripa, Yannick. Women and Madness. Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. An historical
analysis of the beginnings of the psychiatric establishment in France
in the 19th century, and the ways in which development of diagnostics
and other "philanthropic" gestures credited to French
physicians during this period functioned to control the minds and
bodies of women.
Scull, Social Order/Mental Disorder, op. cit.
Scull, Andrew. The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society
in Britain 1700-1900, op. cit.
Scull, Andrew. "A Gothic Tale of Madness and Modern
Medicine." Lectures on the History of Psychiatry. R.M. Murray et
al. eds. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1990.
Scull, Andrew, ed., op. cit.
Scull, Andrew. Museums of Madness. New York: St. Martin's Press,
1979. A discussion of the medicalization and incarceration of
deviance, mental illness in nineteenth century England. Discussion
focuses on how capitalism in
particular and other cultural currents converged to make psychiatry
an expedient and acceptable method for controlling certain deviant populations.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady. New York: Random House, 1985. A
history of women and mental illness in England from 1830 to 1980,
focussing on the oppressive social circumstance of women in culture
and how this
becomes enmeshed in and obscured by the "female malady" of madness.
Skultans, Vieda. Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the
nineteenth Century. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. A
collection of foundational articles by nineteenth century
Psychiatrists. Essays include discussions of the prevalence, causes,
and treatment of mental illness as it was understood at the beginning
of modern psychiatry.
Southart, E. E. and Mary Jarret. Kingdom of Evils. New
York: Macmillan Company, 1922. An extensive set of case
histories and commentary presented by a psychiatrist working at the
turn of the century. Text is instructive as it is an early attempt to
deal with the problems of how to diagnose, treat, and
conceptualize mental illness in a time before biology and
"science" became the pre-eminent discourse in psychiatry;
author's idiosyncratic dialogue is very different and often
antithetical tocurrent perspectives.
Return to Contents
III. The Politics of Diagnosis
A. Diagnosis as Professionally Self Serving
Burton, Thomas M. "Lilly Sales Rise as Use of Prozac Keeps
Growing." The Wall Street Journal. Jan. 31, 1996: pB1(W)-(E), col.6.
Coleman, Lee. Reign of Error: Psychiatry, Authority, and the
Law. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. A discussion of psychiatry's
power over the courts, mental hospitals and prisons; and an argument
that there is no scientific basis or justification for this power.
Author focusses on the misuse of medical credentials and terminology
to justify authoritarian rule over mental health.
Cushman, Philip. Constructing the Self, Constructing America: a
Cultural History of Psychotherapy. Boston, Mass.:
Addison Wesley Pub., 1995. An historical analysis focussing on the
idea that "there have been several healing professions that used
various healing technologies in order to create, shape, and maintain
a particular historical self, that all of these selves have had
important political and economic functions within their eras...[each profession
holding] that the self of its era is the only proper self, that its
technologies have a transcendent warrant...from God, from natural
law, or from the natural sciences."
"Depression Awareness or Prozac Pitch?" Washington Post,
Feb. 5 1995 v. 118: p. C6 Col. 4.
Dumont, Matthew. "In Bed Together at the Market:
Psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical Industry." American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry 60 (1990), pp. 484-485. An opinion piece
discussing the degree to which psychiatric research and practice have
become enmeshed in and dependant on the psychopharmaceutical marketplace.
Freudenheim, Milt. "The Drug Makers are Listening to Prozac; a
Host of Similar Antidepressants May Soon Join the Fight in a $3
Billion Market." Then New York Times. Jan. 9, 1994 v. 143, s.3:
p. F7(N)-(L), col. 1.
Kirk, op. cit.
McGovern, op. cit.
Miller, Michael W. "Creating a Buzz: with Remedy in Hand, Drug
Firms Get Ready to Popularize an Illness; Obsessive Compulsive
Disease Will be Exposed to Blitz of Ads, Polls, Talk Shows; Quest for
a Celebrity Patient." The Wall Street Journal. April, 25, 1994:
pp. A1(W)-(E), col. 6.
Schwartz, Harold I. Psychiatric Practice Under Fire: The Influence of
Government, the Media, and Special Interests on Somatic
Therapies. Washington D.C. 1994.
Warner, Richard. Recover From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry and Political
Economy. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Wiseman, Bruce. Psychiatry: The Ultimate Betrayal. Los Angeles,
California: Freedom Publishing, 1995.
B. Power, Social Control and Diagnostics
a. General Analysis
Banton, Raghild. The Politics of Mental Health. London: Macmillan,
1985. An attempt to articulate a "subversive"
"radical" approach to mental health care based on
principles laid out by feminist and anti-psychiatric scholars and
fundamentally guided by socialist principles. Book posits "mental
health" as a bourgeois and capitalist conception, and therapy
as a capitalist venture.
Bloch, Sidney and Peter Reddaway. Psychiatric Terror. New York: Basic
Books, 1977. Discussion of the use of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
as a means of covert -- and even overt -- social control. Author
discusses the reasons why psychiatry in its current formulation is so
well constructed for such a purpose.
Breggin, Peter. " Psychiatry and Psychotherapy as Political
Process." American Journal of Psychotherapy v. 29 (1975), pp. 369-82.
Brandt, op. cit.
Castel, op. cit.
Coleman, op. cit.
Daniels, op. cit.
Horwitz, op. cit.
Ingleby, David. Critical Psychiatry: the Politics of Mental
Health. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. A discussion of
psychiatry as a social institution that evolved to provide
individually based and therefore straightforward short-term solutions
to problems that are complex and essentially sociopolitical in nature.
Leifer, Ronald. "The medical model as the ideology of the
therapeutic state." Journal of Mind and Behavior v. 11(3-4) (Sum-Fall
1990), pp.247 -258. An argument that diagnostics and psychiatry
arose out of a need for extralegal measures of social control for
behavior outside the parameters of moral incarceration but still
regarded as bizarre or threatening. Author also argues that the
system is inept and impotent in treating or changing the people it
has so diagnosed because it fails to be consistent in its attribution
of moral responsibility for behavior.
Leifer, Ronald. In the Name of Mental Health, op cit.
Robitscher, Jonas B. The Powers of Psychiatry.
Boston: Houghton/Mifflin, 1980. A discussion of the
sociopolitical reasons behind the phenomenal growth of psychiatric
authority in the determination of normality and the codification of
morality. Discussion includes analysis of the concept of mental
disorder and of diagnostics as a
form of social control "only occasionally" medical or scientific.
Schrag, Peter. Mind Control. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Book
discusses the ways in which medicalization of "mental
illness" has become the paradigm of social control -- rather
than more overt methods such as moral codes and legal decree.
Discussion includes sections on the use of psychotropic medications
and on the
function of psychiatric labels in society.
Scull, Andrew. Museums of Madness., op cit.
Silverstein, op. cit.
Szasz, Thomas. Therapeutic State. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus
Books, 1984. A collection of essays beginning from the premise that
mental illness is merely metaphorically related to physical illness
but has been reified as a medical entity to achieve political ends.
Discussion includes sections on psychotropic medications, sexual
disturbance and psychiatry as a whole.
Szasz, Thomas. Law, Liberty and Psychiatry: An Inquiry into the
Social Use of Mental Health Practices, op. cit.
Turner, Bryan S. Medical Power and Social Knowledge. Newbury Park,
California: Sage Publications, 1987.
b. Gender Bias
Al-Issa, Ihsan. The Psychopathology of Women. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1980. An analysis of the reasons behind and
the extent of women's over-representation in psychiatric
settings. Author explores how powerlessness and low social class
-- often both embodied in gender -- can "make people more
vulnerable to the accusation of madness."
Busfield, Joan. Men, Women, and Madness: Understanding gender and
mental disorder. Washington Sq., New York: New York University
Press, 1995. A review and extension of 20 years of feminist
scholarship centered on
the ways in which gender and oppression are implicated in the
presentation and treatment of mental illness as well as the ways in
which gender is implicated in the concept of "mental
Illness" itself.
Chesler, Phyllis. "Twenty Years Since Women and Madness: Toward
a Feminist Institute of Mental Health and Healing. Journal of Mind
and Behavior v. 11(3-4) (1990), pp. 313-322.
Chesler, Phyllis. Women and Madness. Garden City, New York: Doubleday
and Company, 1972. A collection of interviews, prose, and analytic
work centered on the ways in which stigmatization of
"female" behavior has led to women's incarceration, abuse,
and the reification of social oppression in the form of "mental illness."
Etorre, Elizabeth et al. "Psychotropic Drugs: Long Term Use
Dependency and the Gender Factor." Social Science and Medicine
v. 39(12) (Dec. 1994), pp. 1667-1673.
Gardiner, Judith K. "Can Ms. Prozac Talk Back? Feminism
Drugs and Social Constructionism." Feminist
Studies v. 21 (1995), pp. 501-17. A clear, concise summary of key
issues surrounding psychopharmaceutical, discussed primarily from the
perspective of when and how are anti-depressants empowering as
opposed to
anaesthetizing.
Hamilton, Jean A. and Margaret F. Jensvold. "Sex and Gender as
Critical Variables in Feminist
Psychopharmacology Research and Pharmacotherapy. Special Issue:
Psychopharmacology from a Feminist
Perspective." Women and Therapy v. 16(1) (1995), pp. 9-30. A
discussion of the ways in which therapists should be sensitive to
gender issues and why these issues are significant.
Jodelet, Denise. Madness and Social Representations. Los Angeles,
California: University of California Press, 1989. A scholarly
analysis of the reception and relationship between
"civilian" and the "insane" in a French Community
in which the groups interact regularly. The book discusses both
social representations of insanity and personal interactions between
"sane" and "insane" parties, and how these
relationships are or are not shaped by the
"otherness" of the insane.
Lerman, Hannah. Pigeonholing Women's Misery: A History and Critical
Analysis of the Psychodiagnosis of
Women in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, 1996. An
analysis of psychiatric diagnostics, problematizing the covert
subjectivity and counter-therapeutic ends served by the U.S.
classification system.
Liburd, Rosemary and Ester Rothblum. Ethical Decision Making in
Therapy: New York: Guilford Press, 1995. A
discussion of the ways in which women have been medicalized by the
psychiatric institution and an analysis of the ways in which a
feminist glance at PMS, Anorexia Nervosa and other psychiatric
phenomenon leads to ethical and moral questions of how to treat these women
Lunbeck, Elizabeth. The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge Gender
and Power in Modern America. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton
University Press 1994. An historical account of psychiatry's
expansion from the limits of the
institution to the diagnosis of the entire spectrum of human
behavior, from the assessment of what "is" to what
"should be." Issues of particular interest are the role
played by gender and power in the evolution of psychiatric thought
and professional roles.
Ripa, op. cit.
Russel, Denise. Women, Madness and Medicine. Oxford, England: Polity
Press, 1995.
Showalter, op. cit.
Shafter, Roberta. "Women and Madness." Issues in Ego
Psychology v. 12(1) (1989), pp.77-82.
Spender, Dale. "Women and Madness: a Justifiable Response."
Feminism and Psychology v. 4(2) (1994), p.280. A discussion of
Chesler's work, highlighting some of its key and foundational
contributions to an understanding of the social forces at work in
constructing madness and gender.
Ussher, Jane. Women's Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness. Amherst,
Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. An analysis of the
psychopathology of women as understood by psychiatric,
anti-psychiatric, and feminist theorists; and an attempt to
articulate a woman centric model of madness that leads to care rather
than control.
Wade, op. cit.
Warren, Carol A.B. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950's. New
Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1987. A commentary
on data obtained on 17 middle-class women institutionalized for
schizophrenia between 1957 and 1961. Author emphasizes the argument
that the stress reactions to life in an oppressive, sexist society
can and have been labeled pathogenic without attention being paid to
the environments that foster such reactions.
Wenegrat, Brant. Illness and Power. New York: New York University
Press, 1995. An examination of mental illness's prevalence among
women as a response to powerlessness and as a control apparatus for
the powerful elements in society.
Widom, op. cit.
c. Racial and Ethnic Biases
Comas-Diaz, Lilian et. al. eds. Women of Color: Integrating
Ethnicity and Gender Identities in Psychotherapy. New York : Guilford
Press, 1994.
Gilman, Sander L. Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality
, Race and Madness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Thomas, Alexander. Racism and Psychiatry. Secaucus, N.J.: the
ways psychiatry -- despite what are often the best of intentions --
has been and continues to be informed by racism which colors its
perspectives and shapes
its treatments.
d. Socioeconomic Bias
Angermeyer, Matthias C. From Social Class to Social Stress: New
Developments in Psychiatric Epidemiology.
New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987.
Dohrenwend, Bruce and Barbara Dohrenwend. Social Status and
Psychiatric Disorder. New York: John Wiley 1969. An attempt to
document through empirical studies the etiological factors leading to
the well-established relationship between social status and the
prevalence of mental illness.
Greenblatt, Milton et. al. eds. Poverty and Mental
Health. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1967.
A collection of papers discussing poverty as a "stressor"
leading to emotional problems, and how to treat/prevent such an "illness."
Hollingshead, August B. and Frederick C. Redlich. Social Class
and Mental Illness. New York: John Wiley ,
1958. A study of the relationship between social class and the
prevalence, treatment, and diagnosis of Mental Illness in New Haven
Connecticut. Study is one of the earlier American pieces that began
to question the medicalization of mental illness.
Scheper Hughes, Nancy. Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics.
Berkeley, California: University of California
Press, 1979. An analysis of psychosocial factors leading to Ireland's
status as possessing "the highest hospital treatment rate for
mental illness in the world."
Schwab, John J. Social Order and Mental Health : the Florida Health
Study. New York: Brunnel/Mazel, 1979. A
study of one Florida county and how changes in social climate, class,
and cultural preoccupations function s risk factors for mental illness.
C. Psychiatry and the Construction of Selfhood
Cushman, op. cit.
Levin, David Michael. Pathologies of the Modern Self. New York: New
York University Press, 1987. A collection of essays discussing the
historical and cultural forces that intersect both to form the
medical model of mental illness and the "pathologies" that
the medical model seeks to cure.
Leonard, Peter. Personality and Ideology: Toward a Materialist
Understanding of the Individual. London: Macmillan, ?.
D. Religion and Psychiatry
Barshinger, Clark E. "Christian Faith in the Age of
Prozac." Harpers v. 291 (1995), pp. 16-18.I.
Barshinger, Clark E. "The Gospel According to
Prozac." Christianity Today v. 39 (1995), pp. 34-7.
Breggin, Peter R. "Mental Health Versus Religion." The
Humanist v. 47 (1987), pp. 12-13.
Klausner. Psychiatry and Religion: A discussion of the
interrelationship and conflict between religious and psychiatric
healers in modern America.
Summerlin, Florence A. Religion and Mental Health: a
Bibliography. Washington D.C. : DHHS Publications, 1980.
Return to Contents
IV. Effects of Diagnosis on Clients,
Communities and Culture
A. Creation of Stereotypes
Bates. Models of Madness, op. cit
Dalby, Thomas J. "Terms of Madness: Historical Linguistics."
Comprehensive Psychiatry v34 (6) (1993), 392-395.
Fink, Paul Jay and Tasman, Allan, eds. Stigma and Mental Illness.
Washington D.C. : American Psychiatric Press, 1992.
A discussion of the impact that negative stereotyping of and cultural
biases against mental illness have on both treatment and the
interpersonal lives of those so diagnosed.
James, Norman M. "On the Perception of Madness." Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry v. 27(2) (1993), pp. 192-199.
Leifer, Ronald. In the Name of Mental Health: New York: Science House
1969. An attempt to both describe the underlying political meaning
and functions of the medical model of mental illness and to recast
the role of psychiatrists in society as something other than
"physicians who diagnose, treat, and prevent mental illness."
Littlewood, Roland. "The Imitation of Madness:The Influence of
Psychopathology upon Culture." Selected Essays on
Art and Art Therapy. Andrea Gilroy and Tessa Dalley eds. London:
Routledge, 1989.
Perlman, Gerald. "Some Problems with the Medical Model."
Journal of Urban Psychiatry v. 2(1) (1982), pp.31-37. An argument
that the medicalization of mental illness results in and fosters a
separation between the sick and the normal that is
counter-therapeutic. Author analyzes the authoritarian and
paternalistic functioning of mental institutions to exemplify this
point, and argues in favor of other psycho/social models to replace
the medical conception on which care is currently based.
Price, et. al., op. cit.
Rosen, George. Madness in Society: Chapters in the Historical
Sociology of Mental Illness. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1968.
A collection of studies examining the place of the mentally ill in
different societies, organized around the author's belief in the
essential "recognition" of madness in Western Civilization
as "alien," or "foreign."
Scheff, Thomas J. "The Societal Reaction to Deviance: Ascriptive
Elements in the Psychiatric Screening of Mental
Patients in a Midwestern State." Social Problems v. 11 (Spring,
1964), pp. 401-13. A study pointing out the primary role of lay
conceptions of mental illness in the assessment of an individual as
"ill" by the medical and legal communities. Once an
individual is entered into the system by society, the author argues
that the presumption of the system is that he/she is insane
until proven otherwise.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Anne M. Lovell eds. Psychiatry Inside Out:
A selection of writings by Italian theorist Franco Basaglia in which
he discusses the destructive powers of the asylum and the labels it
promotes. Basaglia points to the construction of a rift between
Normal and Abnormal by psychiatry as a fundamental problem for
healing and for humanity.
B. Deficit Labelling
Barnham, Peter and Robert Hayward. Relocating Madness: From the
Mental Patient to the Person. London: Free
Association Books Ltd. 1995.
Cohen, David. Challenging the Therapeutic State: Critical
Perspectives on Psychiatry and the Mental Health Care System.
Vol. 11, nos. 3 and 4 (1990) of the Journal of Mind and Behavior.
Conrad, op. cit.
Doherty, E. "Labelling Effects in Psychiatric
Hospitalization." Archives of General Psychiatry v. 32 (May
`1975). A study documenting the effect that denying or accepting the
label of "mentally ill" had on 42 pt's in a psychiatric
institution. Study found significant interaction between the
rejection of the label and length of stay in hospital. Possible
implications of results are discussed.
Goffman, Erving. Asylums. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1961.
A foundational work discussing the ways in which the institutional
setting combined with the medical model function so as to construct
the self of the inmates. Author discusses implications of his
research for the medical model.
Scheff, Thomas J. Labelling Madness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1976. A collection of essays depicting various situations in
which diagnostics and "labeling" are non-therapeutic and/or
wholly incorrect. Scheff also articulates alternative ways of
conceptualizing and treating mental problems.
Scheff, Thomas J. Mental Illness and Social Process, op. cit.
Silverstein, op. cit.
Szasz, Thomas S. Ideology and Insanity, op. cit.
Temerlin, Maurice K. " Suggestion Effects in Psychiatric
Diagnosis." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease v. 147 (4)
(1968), pp. 349-53.
Townsend, John Marshall. Cultural Conceptions and Mental Illness.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. An examination of the
split between "social role" theorists who argue that labels
and cultural conceptions designate certain people as "ill"
and those who hold mental problems to be purely medical entities.
Author holds this to be a "fallacious" dichotomy that he
attempts to unpack.
C. Bias Toward Psychopharmacology
"Anti-Drug Conterblast in Mental Health." Lancet v. 346
(1995), p. 323.
Barondes, Samuel H. "Thinking About Prozac." Science v. 263
(1994), pp.1102-3.
Black, Antonia. "The Drugging of America's Children."
Redbook v. 184, (1994), pp. 41-2.
Braslow, Ken. "Prozac is no Miracle Cure For Pressures of
Student Life."The Los Angeles Times. Jan. 1, 1995 v. 114: p. M3,
col. 2.
Breggin, Peter. Talking Back To Prozac.
Breggin, Peter. Toxic Psychiatry, op. cit.
Breggin, Peter R. Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain. New York:
Springer Publishing Co. 1983. A discussion of psychotropic
medication. Discussion includes information on the validity of
the medical model for different diagnoses as well as specific
information on the use and problems with many of the more commonly
prescribed psychotropic medications.
Critser, Greg. "Oh How Happy We Will Be: Pills, Paradise, and
the Profits of the Drug Companies." Harper's v. 292 (1996),
p.39-48. iii. An article discussing the benefits of anti-depressants
as well as the marketing and business aspect that has taken over the
reigns for their prescription from the therapeutic community. Author
discusses how psychopharmaceutical company's are making their
products more available, more prescribed, and more desirable to the world.
Eichelman, Burr. "Ethical issues of Pharmacologic and Behavioral
interventions in Psychiatry: Aspects of Education and Respect
forPersons." Science and Morality, Clements, C. ed (1982), pp. 175-185.
Fisher, Seymour. The Limits of Biological Treatments for
Psychological Distress: A series of monographs and empirical studies
designed to assess the effectiveness of pharmacological treatments
for mental illness. Studies also stress an
acceptance of many of the underlying political/ideological
implications of biological interventions.
Gardiner, op. cit.
Goleman, Daniel. "Coming Soon to a Prozac Nation." The New
York Times v. 147 s4 p. E2(N) -E2(L) (1996), col. 1.
Hamilton, Jean A. ed. Psychopharmacology from a Feminist Perspective.
New York: The Hayworth Press, 1995. A collection of papers discussing
the particular importance that must be paid to gender and race issues
when treating women with psychopharmaceuticals because of the slanted
ideologies implied by such treatment.
Hansen, Josephine F. "Portrayal of Women and Elderly Patients in
Psychotropic Drug Advertisements. Special Issue:
Psychopharmacology from a Feminist Perspective." Women and
Therapy v. 16(1) (1995), pp.129-141. Research Paper observing and
analyzing an extremely significant over-representation of women and
elderly people in drug advertisements, including those selling
antidepressants. Author discusses the impact of such advertising both
on psychiatry and on public conceptions of mental illness.
Johnstone, op. cit.
Marsh, Marianne. "Feminist Psychopharmacology." Women and
Therapy v.16(1) (1995), pp.73-84. A discussion of the principles that
the author feels should guide prescription of psychopharmaceuticals.
Author focuses on the need for an understanding and a commitment to
change of the gender biases built into psychiatric practice as a
means of guiding and informing the choice of therapeutic intervention.
Mauro, James. "And Prozac for All." Psychology Today v. 27
(1994), pp. 44-8. A discussion of the growth of prozac sales and the
ways in which prozac has become almost a panacea for psychological
ills. Article discusses pros and cons of the increase in acceptance
of the drugs effectiveness for a variety of problems.
"One Pill Makes you Larger, and One Pill Makes you
Small." Newsweek v. 123 (1994), pp. 36-40.
Pollock, Ellen J. "Side Effects; Managed Care's Focus on Drugs
Alarms Many Doctors; They Say Effort to Cut Costs Leads to Overuse,
Misuse of Pills for Mental Illnesses; Talk Therapy is
Discouraged." The Wall Street Journal. Dec. 1, 1995, n.
240: pp. A1(W)-(E), col. 6.
Ross, op. cit.
Rubin, Jefferey. "Thomas Szasz, William James, and the
Psychiatric Drug Contraversy." The Journal of Humanist
Psychology v. 184 (1994), pp. 8-20.
Schrag, op. cit.
Szasz, Thomas. Therapeutic State, op. cit.
Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1994. An autobiographical narrative of one woman's struggle to cope
with the stressors and problems of her life and how reaction to these
stressors translates into mental illness in today's world.
Return to Contents
V. Expansion of Diagnostics
Angier, Natalie. "The Debilitating Malady Called Boyhood."
The New York Times. July 24, 1994 v.143, s. 4: p. E1(N)-(L), c
Bayer, Ronald. Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: the Politics of
Diagnosis. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987. A
political analysis of the supposedly "scientific"
controversy within the American Psychiatric Association over the
validity of the diagnosis of "homosexuality" as a mental disorder.
Bental, Richard P. "A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Mental
Disorder." Journal of Medical Ethics v. 18 (1992).
Chu, Franklin. The Madness Establishment. New York: Grossman, 1974. A
discussion of Ralph Nader's inquiry into NIMH and community
psychiatric care. Study argues that the expansion of diagnosis is a
direct result of sociopolitical pressures, and that NIMH is primarily
a political -- rather than medical -- institution supporting an
increasingly authoritarian mental health care system that places
psychiatrists at the top of the hierarchy.
Egan, Timothy. "A Washington City Full of Prozac." The New
York Times. Jan. 30, 1994 v. 143, s.1: p.F7(N)-(L), col. 1.
Katz, Martin M. and James W. Maas. "Psychopharmacology and the
Etiology of Psychopathologic States: Are We Looking in the Right
Way." Neuropsychopharmacology v. 10 (2) (1994), pp.139-144.
Kessler, Richard J. "Models of Disease and the Diagnosis of
Schizophrenia." Psychiatry v. 53 (1990), pp. 140-7. Paper does
not critique the medical model, except in so much as to say that its
inattention to the meanings of symptoms leads to an over-diagnosis of
schizophrenia. A problem which the author believes is best corrected
by a new focus on psychodynamic therapies with empathy and
understanding as core constituents.
Kirk, op. cit.
Milloy, Courtland. "Depressing New World." The Washington
Post. Jan. 22, 1995 v. 118: p. B, col.1.
Robitscher, op. cit.
Szasz, Thomas. "Bad Habits are not Diseases." Lancet (July
8, 1972, pp. 83-84.
Szasz, Thomas. Insanity the Idea and Its Consequences. New York:
Wiley, 1987. An attempt to invalidate the medical model of mental
illness and to point out reasons why the model has become so widely
accepted. Author also focuses on the social implication of that acceptance.
Torrey, op. cit.
Return to Contents
VI. Ex Mental Patients Responses
Ablow, Keith Russel. "Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde: Patient Shows
Psychiatry's Shortcomings." Washington Post, Feb. 22, 1994
v.117: p. WH11, Col. 1.
Chamberlain, Judi. "A Psychiatric Survivor Speaks Out."
Feminism and Psychology v. 4(2) (May 1994), pp. 284-287. A former
psychiatric patient, now political reformer and activist, discusses
anger she feels with all theorists -- psychiatrists, psychologists,
feminists -- who attempt to categorize and treat mental illness
without thinking about or listening to the needs and experiences of
those so diagnosed.
Chamberlain, Judi. "The Ex-Patient's Movement." Journal of
Mind and Behavior v.11(3-4) (Sum-Fall 1990), pp.323-336. A discussion
of the goals, achievements and development of the ex-patient's
movement. The article questions the validity of the medical model and
focuses on the importance of developing non-medical self-help
approaches to mental problems that empower and advocate the humanity
of the individual as a counterbalance to the diagnostic imperialism
of the Psychiatric
establishment.
Donaldson, Kenneth. Insanity Inside Out. New York: Crown Publishing,
1976. An autobiography of a man who spent 15 years in a mental
institution unable to convince doctors of his sanity. Donaldson was
finally let out after a controversial supreme court case.
Edwards, Henry. What Happened to My Mother. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
Elfenbein, Debra. Living with Prozac and Other Selective Serotonin
Reuptake Inhibitors: Personal Accounts of Life on Antidepressants.
San Francisco: Harper, 1995.
Geller, Jeff C. Women of the Asylum. New York: Doubleday, 1994. A
collection of 26 first hand accounts of psychiatric treatment
received between 1849 and 1945. Authors also present commentary and
analysis sections highlighting the socio-
political functions of psychiatric practice.
Gotkin, Janet and Paul Gotkin. Too Much Anger, Too Many Tears: A
Personal Triumph Over Psychiatry. New York:
Quadrangle, 1975. An autobiographical history of two people's bouts
with mental illness and the more difficult battle to survive the
psychiatric assault bent on helping them.
Grobe, Jeanine. Beyond Bedlam: Contemporary Women Psychiatric
Survivors Speak Out. Chicago: Third Side Press, 1995. Collection of
work written by women who have undergone psychiatric treatment
critiquing the way the psychiatric establishment diagnoses, treats
and ultimately controls women.
Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. New York: Turtle Bay Books, 1983.
A funny but incisive personal narrative of a psychiatric patient in
which she problematize diagnostics as "not telling you much"
and the underlying assumptions of what is normal.
Millet, Kate. The Looney Bin Trap. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1990. An autobiographical account of a woman's inappropriate
hospitalization, subsequent outpatient treatment with
psychopharmaceuticals, and her recovery from the
"pronouncement" of her "incompetence and degenerative insanity."
Ostwald, Peter. " Genius, Madness and Health: Examples From
Psychobiography." In The Pleasures and Perils of Genius.
Madison, Connecticut: International Universities Press Inc. 1993.
Porter, Roy. A Social History of Madness. New York: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1987. An "historian's" examination of the
writings and times of a small number of relatively famous
"Madmen" and mad-women, including George III and Virginia Woolf.
Wood, Mary E. The Writing on the Wall: Women's Autobiography and the
Asylum. Champaign, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1994. A
compilation of six autobiographical narratives by women committed
against their will to life in an asylum. Editor focusses attention on
the ways in which the narratives illustrate the role played by gender
biases in psychiatry's
construction of the normal.
Return to Contents
VII. Alternatives to Diagnosis
Bates, Erica M. Mental Disorder or Madness. St. Lucia, Australia:
University of Queensland Press, 1979. A thorough
introduction to both the psychiatric view of "mental
illness" and the opposing social and labelling theorists who
argue against the idea that "madness" can be viewed as a
strictly medical entity.
Banton, op. cit.
Barbour, op. cit.
Brown, op. cit.
Boyer, op. cit.
Dumont, "The Non-specificity of Mental Illness," op. cit.
Dumont, Matthew, P. The Absurd Healer: Perspectives of
a Community Psychiatrist. New York: Science House, 1968.
One psychiatrist's perspective on the changes that must be made in
psychiatry in order to take into account and highlight the role of
the environment in the onset and symptomatology of mental illness.
Author stresses the need to weigh changes in an individual's social
field as of equal importance to changing the individual --emphasis on
pathological environments rather than pathological minds.
Fabrega, Horacio, Jr. "Toward a Social Theory of Psychiatric
Phenomena." Behavioral Science v. 38 (1993), pp. 75 - 100.
Farber, Madness, Heresy , and the Rumor of Angels, op. cit.
Farber, "Transcending Medicalism," op. cit.
Fisher, Walter, op. cit.
Frank, George. "Beyond the Psychiatric Principle: a Proposal for
a Psychological Paradigm for the Description and
Classification of Psychopathology." Psychological Reports v. 67
(1990), pp 131-6. A proposal to abandon symptom based, descriptive
systems of diagnosis and move towards a system of classification that
looks at all psychopathology not the presentation of isolated
symptoms but a type of personality -- with cognitive, emotive, social
dimensions. A system that still
classifies, but based upon the individual's problems and the
interactions in which these problems present.
Jaffe, Dennis T. Number Nine: an Autobiography of an Alternative
Counseling Service. New York: Harper and Row,
1975. An autobiographical account of the growth of an alternative
counseling service seeing itself as "counter-institutional."
The group is dedicated to demystifying counseling, centering it on
the connection between individual and community healing,
and breaking away from the detached, medicalized model in which the
doctor has no accountability for the patient or the patient's world.
Kiev, op. cit.
Kirmayer, op. cit.
Kleinman, op. cit.
Mannino, Fortune V. ad Milton F. Shore. Mental Health and Social
Change. New York. AMS Press Inc, 1975. A discussion presented by
members of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, a group
originally created to provide a forum for social and treatment issues
that were and are ignored by the APA. Authors focus on a commitment
to social as well as individual change, and point out the ways in
which mainstream psychiatry's biological bent is limiting and problematic.
Modrow, op. cit.
Perlman, op. cit.
Persons, Jacqueline B. "The Advantages of Studying Psychological
Phenomena rather than Psychiatric Diagnoses." American
Psychiatrist v. 41 (1986), pp. 1252-60. An article written in support
of psychiatry and even of diagnostics, but explicating the drawbacks
in using diagnostics to define research parameters. Author argues
that for research purposes, studying a specific symptom -- rather
than an illness -- would lead to more fruitful research.
Phillips, E. Lakin. The Social Skills Basis of Psychopathology:
Alternatives to Abnormal Psychology. New York: Grune and Stratton,
1978. An attempt to problematize diagnostics and the medical model as
ineffective and inaccurate. Author also attempts to articulate an
alternative conception of psychopathology based upon behavior rather
than biology.
Rosenberg, Morris. The Unread Mind. New York: Lexington Books, 1992.
An exploration of the question "what is madness" and
attempt to construct a conception of madness outside either the
medical model or labelling theory. Author locates madness in
relationships, in the failure to take on appropriate social roles.
Scheff, Thomas. Being Mentally Ill: a Sociological Theory. New York:
Aldine Pub. Co. 1984. A discussion of the relative plausibility and
utility of individually based psychiatric diagnostics as opposed to
labelling theory and more socially derived explanations of mental
illness. Author attempts to use this dialectic to eventually
synthesize an alternative conception.
Sullivan, Henry Stack. The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry: A
collection of lectures presented by Sullivan discussing his theories
both of therapy and psychopathology. Sullivan believed that disorder
was a result of a breakdown in communication in an individual's
relational field; thus, Sullivan sets up psychopathology as lying
directly in the interaction between the individual and society.
Torrey, op. cit.
Ussher, op. cit.
Weiss, Kenneth M. "Advantages of Abandoning Symptom Based
Diagnostic Systems of Research in Schizophrenia." American
Journal of Orthopsychiatry v. 59 (1989), pp.324-30. A discussion of
the ways in which symptom based diagnosis of mental illness -- in
this case schizophrenia -- leads to the reification of a
heterogeneous group of people as "ill" without saying
anything about their treatment needs or etiological background.
Author opts for a search for an"underlying" cause for
symptoms, which is not as useful and as early discussion on diagnostics.
Wing, op. cit.
Return to Contents
VIII. Alternative Treatments
Chamberlain, Judi. On Our Own:Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental
Health System. New York: Hawthorn, 1978. An attempt to articulate alternative
ways of dealing with mental illness without labelling, controlling, manipulating
or otherwise
dehumanizing. Chamberlain is the founding member of the National Association
for Psychiatric Survivors.
Haley, Jay. Uncommon Therapy. New York: Norton, 1986. A brief summary and case
survey of the alternative therapy techniques of Milton Erikson, one of the principle
figures in alternative psychiatric treatment and theory.
Hall, op. cit.
Karp, David A. "Illness Ambiguity and the Search for Meaning: A Case Study
of a Self-Help Group For Affective Disorders." Journal of Contemporary
Ethnography v. 21(2) (1992), p.139-170. A description of the ways in which a
support group diagnosed with depression and manic depression developed ways
of making sense of and coping with their diagnoses, their treatment, and their
problems.
Lebra, op. cit.
Schaeff, Anne Wilson. Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science. San Francisco: Harper,
1992. A description of one psychiatrist's struggle with "assumptions that
[she] was taught in [her ] training...that frequently exacerbated the problem
and facilitated [her] client's adjustment into an addictive , sexist, racist,
self-destructing society. " Author analyzes said assumptions and develops
a holistic approach to healing separate from psychiatry's traditional paradigm
of diagnosis, control, and cure.