You are here

Pathology and the Postmodern
Share
Share

Pathology and the Postmodern
Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience

Edited by:


December 1999 | 288 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
`This is a wonderful volume, powerfully written, timely, insightful, and filled with major pieces; the passion, intellectual rigor and sense of history found here promises to shape this field in the decades to come. This volume sets the agenda for the future' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois

`A beautifully crafted manuscript which re-invigorates the rather stale debate between the traditionalists and the anti-psychiatry schools of thought.... For all those working in mental health arenas the journeying through this text will be highly rewarding indeed. Stick with it.' - Mental Health Care

`This is a book which will apeal to those interested in theoretical debates rather than to practitioners who may find it heavey weather if they have not had the time or resources to engage with what are often quite difficult and often dense writings' - British Journal of Social Work

`This book.. present[s] a clarity that is vivid.... This book would be a good place for psychiatrists to start' - British Journal of Psychiatry

Pathology and the Postmodern explores the relationship between mental distress and social constructionism using new work from eminent scholars in the fields of sociology, psychology and philosophy.

The authors address: how specific cultural, economic and historical forces converge in contemporary psychiatry and psychology; how new syndromes, subjectivities and identities are being constructed and deconstructed in technological, culturally mediated and hyper-reflexive contexts; and what new critiques of positivism and new understandings of `pathology' seem viable, given these still emerging scenarios.

Building upon work in such areas as labelling theory, feminist studies, linguistics, and post-structuralism, the twelve chapters engage the cultural, historical and political conditions that should be implicated in our understanding of contemporary mental suffering.

 
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
Dwight Fee
The Broken Dialogue
Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience

 
 
PART TWO: PSYCHIATRIC DISCOURSE AND MENTAL LIFE IN POSTMODERN SPACES
Simon Gottschalk
Escape from Insanity
`Mental Disorder' in the Postmodern Moment

 
Jackie Orr
Performing Methods
History, Hysteria and the New Science of Psychiatry

 
Dwight Fee
The Project of Pathology
Reflexivity and Depression in Elizabeth Wurtzel's /f003Prozac Nation

 
 
PART THREE: PATHOLOGY AND SELFHOOD: NEW AND CONTESTED SUBJECTIVITIES
Kenneth J Gergen
The Self
Transfiguration by Technology

 
Mark Freeman
Modernists at Heart? Postmodern Artist Breakdowns and the Question of Identity
Janet Wirth-Cauchon
A Dangerous Symbolic Mobility
Narratives of Borderline Personality Disorder

 
John P Hewitt, Michael R Fraser and Leslie Beth Berger
Is it Me or Is it Prozac? Antidepressants and the Construction of Self
 
PART FOUR: TOWARD NEW APPROACHES: EPISTEMOLOGY, RESEARCH, POLITICS
Vivian Burr and Trevor Butt
Psychological Distress and Postmodern Thought
Jane Ussher
Women's Madness
A Material-Discursive-Intrapsychic Approach

 
S R Sabat and Rom Harr[ac]e
Grammar and the Brain
Fred Newman
Does a Story Need a Theory? Understanding the Methodology of Narrative Therapy

`An exciting, challenging and thought-provoking book which many have waited years for. This is an excellent series of edited accounts which expand and invigorate the dialogue about the history, phenomenology, and contemporary experience of mental illness in a sociohistorical context that is in several respects increasingly hostile to the tenets of "social constructionism" a perspective fundermental to such discussions' - Counselling Psychology Review

`This is a wonderful volume, powerfully written, timely, insightful, and filled with major pieces; the passion, intellectual rigor and sense of history found here promises to shape this field in the decades to come. This volume sets the agenda for the future' - Norman K Denzin, University of Illinois

`A beautifully crafted manuscript which re-invigorates the rather stale debate between the traditionalists and the anti-psychiatry schools of thought.... For all those working in mental health arenas the journeying through this text will be highly rewarding indeed. Stick with it.' - Mental Health Care

`This is a book which will apeal to those interested in theoretical debates rather than to practitioners who may find it heavey weather if they have not had the time or resources to engage with what are often quite difficult and often dense writings' - British Journal of Social Work

`This book.. present[s] a clarity that is vivid.... This book would be a good place for psychiatrists to start' - British Journal of Psychiatry

For instructors

This book is not available as an inspection copy. For more information contact your local sales representative.

Purchasing options

Please select a format:

ISBN: 9780761952534
£60.00
ISBN: 9780761952527
£171.00

SAGE Knowledge is the ultimate social sciences digital library for students, researchers, and faculty. Hosting more than 4,400 titles, it includes an expansive range of SAGE eBook and eReference content, including scholarly monographs, reference works, handbooks, series, professional development titles, and more.

The platform allows researchers to cross-search and seamlessly access a wide breadth of must-have SAGE book and reference content from one source.

SAGE Knowledge brings together high-quality content from across our imprints, including CQ Press and Corwin titles.