Madness Explained

Madness Explained PDF Author: Richard P Bentall
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141909323
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
Today most of us accept the consensus that madness is a medical condition: an illness, which can be identified, classified and treated with drugs like any other. In this ground breaking and controversial work Richard Bentall shatters the myths that surround madness. He shows there is no reassuring dividing line between mental health and mental illness. Severe mental disorders can no longer be reduced to brain chemistry, but must be understood psychologically, as part of normal behaviour andhuman nature. Bentall argues that we need a radically new way of thinking about psychosis and its treatment. Could it be that it is a fear of madness, rather than the madness itself, that is our problem?

Madness Explained

Madness Explained PDF Author: Richard P Bentall
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141909323
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 656

Get Book

Book Description
Today most of us accept the consensus that madness is a medical condition: an illness, which can be identified, classified and treated with drugs like any other. In this ground breaking and controversial work Richard Bentall shatters the myths that surround madness. He shows there is no reassuring dividing line between mental health and mental illness. Severe mental disorders can no longer be reduced to brain chemistry, but must be understood psychologically, as part of normal behaviour andhuman nature. Bentall argues that we need a radically new way of thinking about psychosis and its treatment. Could it be that it is a fear of madness, rather than the madness itself, that is our problem?

Madness Explained

Madness Explained PDF Author: Richard P. Bentall
Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN: 9780141975382
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A revised edition of the groundbreaking classic on mental illness Is madness purely a medical condition that can be treated with drugs? Is there a clear dividing line between who is sane and who is insane? In his groundbreaking work, Madness Explained, leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall shattered the modern myths that surround psychosis. For this revised edition, he adds new material drawing on the recent advances in molecular genetics, new studies of the role of environment in psychosis, and important discoveries on early symptoms preceding illness, among other important developments in our understanding.

Reef Madness

Reef Madness PDF Author: David Dobbs
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307490076
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Explores the century-long controversy over the orgins of coral reefs, a debate that split the world of nineteenth-century science, looking at the diverse roles of Louis Agassiz, his son Alexander, and Charles Darwin and reflecting on how the search for the truth shed new light on the formation of Earth and its natural wonders.

Madness Is Better Than Defeat

Madness Is Better Than Defeat PDF Author: Ned Beauman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385353006
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
In 1938, two rival expeditions descend on an ancient temple recently discovered in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a huge Hollywood production on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York. A seemingly endless stalemate ensues. Twenty years later, a rogue CIA agent sets out to exploit the temple for his own ends, unaware that it is a locus of conspiracies far grander than anyone could ever have guessed. Shot through with intrigue, ingenuity, and adventure, and showcasing Beauman’s riotous humor, spectacular imagination, and riveting prose, Madness Is Better Than Defeat is a novel without parallel: inventive, anarchic, and delightfully insane.

A Philosophy of Madness

A Philosophy of Madness PDF Author: Wouter Kusters
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262044285
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 769

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Book Description
The philosophy of psychosis and the psychosis of philosophy: a philosopher draws on his experience of madness. In this book, philosopher and linguist Wouter Kusters examines the philosophy of psychosis—and the psychosis of philosophy. By analyzing the experience of psychosis in philosophical terms, Kusters not only emancipates the experience of the psychotic from medical classification, he also emancipates the philosopher from the narrowness of textbooks and academia, allowing philosophers to engage in real-life praxis, philosophy in vivo. Philosophy and madness—Kusters's preferred, non-medicalized term—coexist, one mirroring the other. Kusters draws on his own experience of madness—two episodes of psychosis, twenty years apart—as well as other first-person narratives of psychosis. Speculating about the maddening effect of certain words and thought, he argues, and demonstrates, that the steady flow of philosophical deliberation may sweep one into a full-blown acute psychotic episode. Indeed, a certain kind of philosophizing may result in confusion, paradoxes, unworldly insights, and circular frozenness reminiscent of madness. Psychosis presents itself to the psychotic as an inescapable truth and reality. Kusters evokes the mad person's philosophical or existential amazement at reality, thinking, time, and space, drawing on classic autobiographical accounts of psychoses by Antonin Artaud, Daniel Schreber, and others, as well as the work of phenomenological psychiatrists and psychologists and such phenomenologists as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He considers the philosophical mystic and the mystical philosopher, tracing the mad undercurrent in the Husserlian philosophy of time; visits the cloud castles of mystical madness, encountering LSD devotees, philosophers, theologians, and nihilists; and, falling to earth, finds anxiety, emptiness, delusions, and hallucinations. Madness and philosophy proceed and converge toward a single vanishing point.

Madness and Civilization

Madness and Civilization PDF Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307833100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Michel Foucault examines the archeology of madness in the West from 1500 to 1800 - from the late Middle Ages, when insanity was still considered part of everyday life and fools and lunatics walked the streets freely, to the time when such people began to be considered a threat, asylums were first built, and walls were erected between the "insane" and the rest of humanity.

Models of Madness

Models of Madness PDF Author: John Read
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135445087
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Models of Madness shows that hallucinations and delusions are understandable reactions to life events and circumstances rather than symptoms of a supposed genetic predisposition or biological disturbance. International contributors: * critique the 'medical model' of madness * examine the dominance of the 'illness' approach to understanding madness from historical and economic perspectives * document the role of drug companies * outline the alternative to drug based solutions * identify the urgency and possibility of prevention of madness. Models of Madness promotes a more humane and effective response to treating severely distressed people that will prove essential reading for psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and of great interest to all those who work in the mental health service. This book forms part of the International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Psychoses series edited by Brian Martindale.

A First-Rate Madness

A First-Rate Madness PDF Author: Nassir Ghaemi
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143121332
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The New York Times bestseller “A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . .” —The Boston Globe “A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi’s book deserves high marks for original thinking.” —The Washington Post “Provocative, fascinating.” —Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

Models of Madness

Models of Madness PDF Author: Dr John Read
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134055021
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Are hallucinations and delusions really symptoms of an illness called ‘schizophrenia’? Are mental health problems really caused by chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions? Are psychiatric drugs as effective and safe as the drug companies claim? Is madness preventable? This second edition of Models of Madness challenges those who hold to simplistic, pessimistic and often damaging theories and treatments of madness. In particular it challenges beliefs that madness can be explained without reference to social causes and challenges the excessive preoccupation with chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions as causes of human misery, including the conditions that are given the name 'schizophrenia'. This edition updates the now extensive body of research showing that hallucinations, delusions etc. are best understood as reactions to adverse life events and that psychological and social approaches to helping are more effective and far safer than psychiatric drugs and electroshock treatment. A new final chapter discusses why such a damaging ideology has come to dominate mental health and, most importantly, how to change that. Models of Madness is divided into three sections: Section One provides a history of madness, including examples of violence against the ‘mentally ill’, before critiquing the theories and treatments of contemporary biological psychiatry and documenting the corrupting influence of drug companies. Section Two summarises the research showing that hallucinations, delusions etc. are primarily caused by adverse life events (eg. parental loss, bullying, abuse and neglect in childhood, poverty, etc) and can be understood using psychological models ranging from cognitive to psychodynamic. Section Three presents the evidence for a range of effective psychological and social approaches to treatment, from cognitive and family therapy to primary prevention. This book brings together thirty-seven contributors from ten countries and a wide range of scientific disciplines. It provides an evidence-based, optimistic antidote to the pessimism of biological psychiatry. Models of Madness will be essential reading for all involved in mental health, including service users, family members, service managers, policy makers, nurses, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychoanalysts, social workers, occupational therapists, art therapists.

Reasoning About Madness

Reasoning About Madness PDF Author: J. K. Wing
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 141283273X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The exact definition of "madness" remains elusive. There are difficulties in distinguishing the criminal from the mad or, more euphemistically, the mentally ill. Controversy has centered on the frightening potential possessed by the state to deprive of his rights the individual officially classified as mad. In this book, Wing, a psychiatrist of international repute, argues for a limited medical definition of mental illness, although he explains how even a doctor's professional judgment may often be influenced by social pressures. He compares concepts of madness prevalent in different types of society, examining, for example, the Marxist attitude towards the deviant in a socialist state. In a chapter which draws much from his own experience, he shows precisely how the apparatus of state medicine is used to suppress political dissidence in Russia. He also critically reviews the petty tyrannies prevalent in the West and tackles the difficult analytical problem of schizophrenia, a subject on which he is one of the most respected medical authorities. Reasoning about Madness is an original and important work in which the author successfully resists the temptation to erect "grand theories that explain nothing because they attempt to explain everything." Instead, he concentrates on developing a definition of madness which strikes a balance between the benefits of medical care and the preservation of human liberties.