20th century
A01=Joel Braslow
Author_Joel Braslow
biological psychiatry
brutal ways
Category=JM
Category=MBP
clitoridectomy
electroshock therapy
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
hydrotherapy
lobotomy
madness
medical
mental distress
mental health care
mental health history
mental illness
mental patients
neuroscience
patient interviews
physical distress
psych history
psychiatric hospital records
psychiatric medicine
psychology
psychopathology
social sciences
sterilization
therapeutic treatments
treatments
verbatim transcripts
Product details
- ISBN 9780520205475
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Oct 1997
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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"Mental Ills and Bodily Cures" depicts a time when psychiatric medicine went to lengths we now find extreme and perhaps even brutal ways to heal the mind by treating the body. From a treasure trove of California psychiatric hospital records, including many verbatim transcripts of patient interviews, Joel Braslow masterfully reconstructs the world of mental patients and their doctors in the first half of the twentieth century. Hydrotherapy, sterilization, electroshock, lobotomy, and clitoridectomy - these were among the drastic somatic treatments used in these hospitals. By allowing the would-be healers and those in psychological and physical distress to speak for themselves, Braslow captures the intense and emotional interplay surrounding these therapies. His investigation combines revealing clinical detail with the immediacy of 'being there' in the institutional setting while decisions are made, procedures undertaken, and results observed by all those involved.
We learn how well-intentioned physicians could rationalize and regard as therapeutic treatments that often had dreadful consequences, and how much the social and cultural world is inscribed within the practice of biological psychiatry. The book will interest historians of medicine, practicing psychiatrists, and everyone who knows or has seen what it's like to be in mental distress.
Joel Braslow is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
