Psychiatry and the Business of Madness

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction to the Study: Unveiling the Problematic

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 1-23

3. The Evolution of “Madness”: A Journey “through Time,” Part One

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 25-44

4. Modernity (1890–2014): A Journey through Time, Part Two

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 45-71

5. Probing the Boss Text: The DSM—What? Whither? How? Which?

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 73-100

6. The Beast/In the Belly of the Beast: Pinioned by Paper

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 101-141

7. The Psychiatric Team

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 143-165

8. Marching to “Pharmageddon”: Psychopharmacy Unmasked

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 167-200

9. Electroshock: Not a “Healing” Option

   • Bonnie Burstow

   Pages 201-227

10. Dusting Ourselves Off and Starting Anew

    • Bonnie Burstow

    Pages 229-264

11. Back Matter

    Pages 265-302

    PDF

Based on extensive research, this book is a fundamental critique of psychiatry that examines the foundations of psychiatry, refutes its basic tenets, and traces the workings of the industry through medical research and in-depth interviews.

• Psychiatry
• antipsychiatry
• critical disability
• mad
• psychopharmacy
• electroshock
• social commons
• lobotomy
• eugenics
• institutional ethnography
• critical discourse analysis
• feminism
• utopia
• mental illness
• diagnoses
• DSM
• Szasz
• Foucault
• evolution
• psychiatry

“This book is a detailed IE account of the strangle-hold psychiatry has on so many. … this text should be core reading for anyone in the helping professions who is unaware of or has forgotten how psychiatry controls and manipulates those under its authority. … this is an important book. It made us question a good deal of what we ‘know’; personally and professionally, and we have already recommended it to colleagues, friends, and students.” (Jennifer Poole, Zachary Sera Grant & Katherina Yerro, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, Vol. 5, 2016)

“This book is arguably the most comprehensive and brilliant critique of psychiatry that I’ve ever read; it’s a devastating expose of psychiatry’s discredited medical model and institutional psychiatry, ‘a regime of ruling.’ Bonnie Burstow’s book is absolutely awesome in its numerous, thoroughly researched facts and original insights and scholarship frequently voiced with passion.” (Don Weitz, Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 17 (1), 2015)

"This is a powerfully unsettling book. Burstow expresses outrage about, and level-headed analysis of, the oppressive and alienating practices of psychiatry and holds out hope for emancipation that builds on everyday interactions in a transformed society. It's an outstanding contribution to critical thinking about mental health, and to ethics, law, and social change a no-holds barred, take-no-prisoners radical history and deconstruction of all modern mental health practices and an ambitious, inspiring 'eutopian' proposal for their reinvention." - David Cohen, Professor and Marjorie Crump Chair in Social Welfare, University of California, Los Angeles, US

Bonnie Burstow is Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is a philosopher, feminist therapist, and an antipsychiatry activist. Her other works include Radical Feminist Therapy (1992), Psychiatry Disrupted (2014), Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work (2003), and A Rose by Any Other Name: Naming and the Battle against Psychiatry (2013).

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