IsisCB Explore

Book ID: CBB039375782

Madness in Cold War America (2016)

Dunst, Alexander (Author)

Routledge
Publication date: 2016
Language: English

ISBN: 9781138951242

Publication Date: 2016
Physical Details: 184

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

Google Books

Cold War Social control Psychopathology Social movements Counterculture Neoliberalism Mental disorders and diseases Psychiatry Medicine and culture Medicine and society 21st century 20th century, late United States

This book tells the story of how madness came to play a prominent part in America’s political and cultural debates. It argues that metaphors of madness rise to unprecedented popularity amidst the domestic struggles of the early Cold War and become a pre-eminent way of understanding the relationship between politics and culture in the United States. In linking the individual psyche to society, psychopathology contributes to issues central to post-World War II society: a dramatic extension of state power, the fate of the individual in bureaucratic society, the political function of emotions, and the limits to admissible dissent. Such vocabulary may accuse opponents of being crazy. Yet at stake is a fundamental error of judgment, for which madness provides welcome metaphors across US diplomacy and psychiatry, social movements and criticism, literature and film. In the process, major parties and whole historical eras, literary movements and social groups are declared insane. Reacting against violence at home and war abroad, countercultural authors oppose a sane madness to irrational reason―romanticizing the wisdom of the schizophrenic and paranoia’s superior insight. As the Sixties give way to a plurality of lifestyles an alternative vision arrives: of a madness now become so widespread and ordinary that it may, finally, escape pathology.

...More

Reviewed By

Review Adam Montgomery (2017) Review of "Madness in Cold War America". History of Psychiatry (pp. 382-383). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB039375782

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Mario Augusto Maieron; (2018)
1978-2018. The Basaglia Law forty years after (/p/isis/citation/CBB956923730/)

Article Andrew Scull; (2021)
"Community Care": Historical Perspective on Deinstitutionalization (/p/isis/citation/CBB956009030/)

Book Lucas Richert; (2019)
Break On Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture (/p/isis/citation/CBB588038334/)

Article Mark Gallagher; (2017)
From asylum to action in Scotland: The emergence of the Scottish Union of Mental Patients, 1971–2 (/p/isis/citation/CBB943092784/)

Article Aragona, Massimiliano; (2013)
Neopositivism and the DSM Psychiatric Classification. An Epistemological History. Part 1: Theoretical Comparison (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320328/)

Thesis Madeleine Marie Parra Allen; (2018)
Confronting the Power of Psychiatry: The Psychiatric Survivors' Movement, 1972-1986 (/p/isis/citation/CBB575040905/)

Book Dr Martin Halliwell; (2017)
Voices of Mental Health: Medicine, Politics, and American Culture, 1970-2000 (/p/isis/citation/CBB591715382/)

Book Martin, Emily; (2007)
Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture (/p/isis/citation/CBB000774183/)

Book Weinstein, Deborah; (2013)
The Pathological Family: Postwar America and the Rise of Family Therapy (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201271/)

Article Pickersgill, Martyn; (2014)
The Endurance of Uncertainty: Antisociality and Ontological Anarchy in British Psychiatry, 1950--2010 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001420397/)

Article José I Pérez Revuelta; José M Villagrán Moreno; (2021)
Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 2: Moreau as psychopathologist (/p/isis/citation/CBB912675190/)

Article Jose I Pérez Revuelta; Jose M Villagrán Moreno; (2021)
Moreau de Tours: organicism and subjectivity. Part 1: Life and work (/p/isis/citation/CBB757360111/)

Article Alexa Geisthövel; (2020)
Die Reform der «Psychopathie»: Forensischpsychiatrische Begutachtung im geteilten Berlin, 1960–1980 (/p/isis/citation/CBB790107328/)

Article Houston, R. A.; (2014)
A Latent Historiography? The Case of Psychiatry in Britain, 1500--1820 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201200/)

Article Slijkhuis, Jessica; Oosterhuis, Harry; (2013)
“Paralysed with fears and worries”: Neurasthenia as a Gender-Specific Disease of Civilization (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320323/)

Article Phil Brown; (2021)
From the Radical Psychology Movement to STS: A Journey From the 1960s in Multiple Parts (/p/isis/citation/CBB099951762/)

Article Rubin, Lawrence C.; (2014)
Introduction: Mental Health and Illness in American Culture (/p/isis/citation/CBB001202129/)

Book Amy F. Ogata; (2013)
Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America (/p/isis/citation/CBB389474571/)

Thesis Jenness, Katherine; (2013)
The Collapsing Self: Psychoanalysis in American Life, 1946 to the Present (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562890/)

Book Anne-Emanuelle Birn; Raúl Necochea López; (2020)
Peripheral Nerve: Health and Medicine in Cold War Latin America (/p/isis/citation/CBB246542052/)