Performance Madness And Psychiatry

This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike.

This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike.

Nineteenth-century French writers and travelers imagined Muslim colonies in North Africa to be realms of savage violence, lurid sexuality, and primitive madness. Colonial Madness traces the genealogy and development of this idea from the beginnings of colonial expansion to the present, revealing the ways in which psychiatry has been at once a weapon in the arsenal of colonial racism, an innovative branch of medical science, and a mechanism for negotiating the meaning of difference for republican citizenship. Drawing from extensive archival research and fieldwork in France and North Africa, Richard Keller offers much more than a history of colonial psychology. Colonial Madness explores the notion of what French thinkers saw as an inherent mental, intellectual, and behavioral rift marked by the Mediterranean, as well as the idea of the colonies as an experimental space freed from the limitations of metropolitan society and reason. These ideas have modern relevance, Keller argues, reflected in French thought about race and debates over immigration and France’s postcolonial legacy.

From Madness to Mental Health neither glorifies nor denigrates the contributions of psychiatry, clinical psychology, and psychotherapy, but rather considers how mental disorders have historically challenged the ways in which human beings have understood and valued their bodies, minds, and souls. Greg Eghigian has compiled a unique anthology of readings, from ancient times to the present, that includes Hippocrates; Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, penned in the 1390s; Dorothea Dix; Aaron T. Beck; Carl Rogers; and others, culled from religious texts, clinical case studies, memoirs, academic lectures, hospital and government records, legal and medical treatises, and art collections. Incorporating historical experiences of medical practitioners and those deemed mentally ill, From Madness to Mental Health also includes an updated bibliography of first-person narratives on mental illness compiled by Gail A. Hornstein.

Mad people's historical anthologies and republished writings -- Mad people's perspectives in institutional histories -- Mad people's historical biographies -- Mad people's activist histories -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 16: Dementia: confusion at the borderlands of aging and madness -- Dementia in the distant past -- Framing dementia as a brain disease in modern German psychiatry -- Framing dementia as a problem in the adjustment to aging in mid-century American psychodynamic psychiatry -- Framing dementia as dread disease and major public health crisis in an aging world -- Conclusion: the ongoing entanglement of dementia and aging -- Notes -- PART VI: Maladies, disorders, and treatments -- Chapter 17: Passions and moods -- Emotions in history -- Grand narratives and overarching themes -- Specific stories and critical contexts -- Conclusion and areas for further scholarship -- Notes -- Chapter 18: Psychosis -- Madness -- Psychosis is a special thing -- If "psychotic" means "psychosis-like," then what, pray tell, is psychosis like? -- Schizophrenia -- Notes -- Chapter 19: Somatic treatments -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 20: Psychotherapy in society: historical reflections -- Notes -- Chapter 21: The antidepressant era revisited: towards differentiation and patient-empowerment in diagnosis and treatment -- Psychopharmacology and historiography -- Towards a new chemistry of the mind -- Mother's little helpers -- Appetite for new chemical wonders for the mind -- Towards differentiation and patient empowerment in the era of genomics -- Notes -- Index

This readable text presents the long-awaited first comprehensive history of the Royal College of Psychiatrists as an organisation, from its creation as the Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane in 1841, its development through various name changes and the receipt of two charters, to become the present Royal College as we know it today. As a former President of the College from 1984-7, Dr Bewley also gives an overview of the fascinating developments in British psychiatry and its sub-specialties over the past two centuries. Further, more specific activities are also detailed, such as the formation of the research unit, the College publishing programme of journals and books, and the growth in facilities now provided including the library and information service. The book contains a collection of photographs in a glossy centre section.

Actresses and Mental Illness investigates the relationship between the work of the actress and her personal experience of mental illness, from the late nineteenth through to the end of twentieth century. Over the past two decades scholars have made great advances in our understanding of the history of the actress, unearthing the material conditions of her working life, the force of her creative agency and the politics of her reception and representation. By focusing specifically on actresses’ encounters with mental illness, Fiona Gregory builds on this earlier work and significantly supplements it. Through detailed case studies of both well-known and neglected figures in theatre and film history, including Mrs Patrick Campbell, Vivien Leigh, Frances Farmer and Diana Barrymore, it shows how mental illness – actual or supposed – has impacted on actresses’ performances, careers and celebrity. The book covers a range of topics including: representing emotion on stage; the ‘failed’ actress; actresses and addiction; and actresses and psychiatric treatment. Actresses and Mental Illness expands the field of actress studies by showing how consideration of the personal experience of the actress influences our understanding of her work and its reception. The book underscores how the actress can be perceived as a representative public woman, acting as a lens through which we can examine broader attitudes to women and mental illness.

This study traces key developments in theatre’s engagement with mental health since the 1970s. It introduces and applies the concept of the ‘mental health play’ as accurate and timely in addressing the way mental distress and mental illness have been brought to the stage. The study argues that the theatre is a central calibrator for reflecting developments and tensions in, as well as attitudes towards, mental health care, and thus opens up a domain that still has stereotypes and myths attached to it. Theatre’s representations of mental distress inform and shape cultural production and vice versa. Mental health plays are central in encouraging and fostering conversations about mental health, and they thus intervene in ongoing debates. Due to its interdisciplinary approach, this study contributes to and extends existing research in multiple fields, including theatre and science, performance studies, and the medical humanities.