In this book Allan Horwitz views mental illness within a sociological framework of deviance and social control and evaluates communal and individualistic styles of therapeutic control. His new prologue updates the work in the context of significant changes in the American response to mental illness, including the process of psychiatric diagnosis, conceptions of mental illness, and the dynamics of the mental health professions. Originally published by Academic Press in 1982.

Social Control of Mental Illness (STUDIES ON LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL)

Politics & Social Sciences

Horwitz, Allan V.

Social Sciences

Academic Pr

What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture

Since the emergence of Western philosophy and science among the classical Greeks, debates have raged over the relative significance of biology and culture on an individual's behavior. Today, recent advances in genetics and biological science have pushed most scholars past the tired nature vs. nurture debate to examine the ways in which the natural and the social interact to influence human behavior. In What's Normal?, Allan Horwitz brings a fresh approach to this emerging perspective. Rather than try to solve these issues universally, Horwitz demonstrates that both social and biological mechanisms have varying degrees of influence in different situations. Through case studies of human universals such as incest aversion, fear, appetite, grief, and sex, Horwitz first discusses the extreme instances where biology determines behavior, where culture dominates, and where culture overrides basic biological instincts. He then details the variety of ways in which genes and environments interact; for instance, the primal drive to eat and store calories when food supplies were scarce creates serious problems in a society where food is abundant and obesity stigmatized. Now that it's often easier to change our biology rather than our culture, an understanding of which behaviors and traits are simply normal or abnormal, and which are pathological or necessitate treatment is more important than ever. Wide-ranging and accessible, What's Normal? provides a crucial guide to the biological and social bases of human behavior at the heart of these matters.

Anthropology

Oxford University Press

Since the emergence of Western philosophy and science among the classical Greeks, debates have raged over the relative significance of biology and culture on an individual's behavior. Today, recent advances in genetics and biological science have pushed most scholars past the tired nature vs. nurture debate to examine the ways in which the natural and the social interact to influence human behavior. In What's Normal?, Allan Horwitz brings a fresh approach to this emerging perspective. Rather than try to solve these issues universally, Horwitz demonstrates that both social and biological mechanisms have varying degrees of influence in different situations. Through case studies of human universals such as incest aversion, fear, appetite, grief, and sex, Horwitz first discusses the extreme instances where biology determines behavior, where culture dominates, and where culture overrides basic biological instincts. He then details the variety of ways in which genes and environments interact; for instance, the primal drive to eat and store calories when food supplies were scarce creates serious problems in a society where food is abundant and obesity stigmatized. Now that it's often easier to change our biology rather than our culture, an understanding of which behaviors and traits are simply normal or abnormal, and which are pathological or necessitate treatment is more important than ever. Wide-ranging and accessible, What's Normal? provides a crucial guide to the biological and social bases of human behavior at the heart of these matters.

Between Sanity and Madness: Mental Illness from Ancient Greece to the Neuroscientific Era examines several perennial issues about mental illness: how different societies have distinguished mental disorders from normality; whether mental illnesses are similar to or different from organic conditions; and the ways in which different eras conceive of the causes of mental disorder. It begins with the earliest depictions of mental illness in Ancient Greek literature, philosophy, and medicine and concludes with the portrayals found in modern neuroscience. In contrast to the tremendous advances other branches of medicine display in answering questions about the nature, causes, and treatments of physical diseases, current psychiatric knowledge about what qualities of madness distinguish it from sanity, the resemblance of mental and physical pathologies, and the kinds of factors that lead people to become mentally ill does not show any steady growth or, arguably, much progress. The immense recent technological advances in brain science have not yet led to corresponding improvements in understandings of and explanations for mental illnesses. These perplexing phenomena remain almost as mysterious now as they were millennia ago.

Between Sanity and Madness: Mental Illness from Ancient Greece to the Neuroscientific Era

Medical Books

Medicine

Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives. Warnings that depressive disorder is a leading cause of worldwide disability have been accompanied by a massive upsurge in the consumption of antidepressant medication, widespread screening for depression in clinics and schools, and a push to diagnose depression early, on the basis of just a few symptoms, in order to prevent more severe conditions from developing. In The Loss of Sadness, Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield argue that, while depressive disorder certainly exists and can be a devastating condition warranting medical attention, the apparent epidemic in fact reflects the way the psychiatric profession has understood and reclassified normal human sadnes

The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Wakefield, Jerome C.

Diseases & Physical Ailments

Creating Mental Illness

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior. "Thought-provoking and important. . .Drawing on and consolidating the ideas of a range of authors, Horwitz challenges the existing use of the term mental illness and the psychiatric ideas and practices on which this usage is based. . . . Horwitz enters this controversial territory with confidence, conviction, and clarity."—Joan Busfield, American Journal of Sociology "Horwitz properly identifies the financial incentives that urge therapists and drug companies to proliferate psychiatric diagnostic categories. He correctly identifies the stranglehold that psychiatric diagnosis has on research funding in mental health. Above all, he provides a sorely needed counterpoint to the most strident advocates of disease-model psychiatry."—Mark Sullivan, Journal of the American Medical Association "Horwitz makes at least two major contributions to our understanding of mental disorders. First, he eloquently draws on evidence from the biological and social sciences to create a balanced, integrative approach to the study of mental disorders. Second, in accomplishing the first contribution, he provides a fascinating history of the study and treatment of mental disorders. . . from early asylum work to the rise of modern biological psychiatry."—Debra Umberson, Quarterly Review of Biology

History

University of Chicago Press

In this surprising book, Allan V. Horwitz argues that our current conceptions of mental illness as a disease fit only a small number of serious psychological conditions and that most conditions currently regarded as mental illness are cultural constructions, normal reactions to stressful social circumstances, or simply forms of deviant behavior. "Thought-provoking and important. . .Drawing on and consolidating the ideas of a range of authors, Horwitz challenges the existing use of the term mental illness and the psychiatric ideas and practices on which this usage is based. . . . Horwitz enters this controversial territory with confidence, conviction, and clarity."—Joan Busfield, American Journal of Sociology "Horwitz properly identifies the financial incentives that urge therapists and drug companies to proliferate psychiatric diagnostic categories. He correctly identifies the stranglehold that psychiatric diagnosis has on research funding in mental health. Above all, he provides a sorely needed counterpoint to the most strident advocates of disease-model psychiatry."—Mark Sullivan, Journal of the American Medical Association "Horwitz makes at least two major contributions to our understanding of mental disorders. First, he eloquently draws on evidence from the biological and social sciences to create a balanced, integrative approach to the study of mental disorders. Second, in accomplishing the first contribution, he provides a fascinating history of the study and treatment of mental disorders. . . from early asylum work to the rise of modern biological psychiatry."—Debra Umberson, Quarterly Review of Biology

Mental Health

The Social Control of Mental Illness (Foundations of Sociology)

Percheron Press/Eliot Werner Publications

The first comprehensive history of "psychiatry's bible"--the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. Although the manual is portrayed as an authoritative corpus of psychiatric knowledge, it is a product of intense political conflicts, dissension, and factionalism. The manual results from struggles among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, different mental health professions, and a variety of patient, familial, feminist, gay, and veterans' interest groups. The DSM is fundamentally a social document that both reflects and shapes the professional, economic, and cultural forces associated with its use. In DSM, Allan V. Horwitz examines how the manual, known colloquially as "psychiatry's bible," has been at the center of thinking about mental health in the United States since its original publication in 1952. The first book to examine its entire history, this volume draws on both archival sources and the literature on modern psychiatry to show how the history of the DSM is more a story of the growing social importance of psychiatric diagnoses than of increasing knowledge about the nature of mental disorder. Despite attempts to replace it, Horwitz argues that the DSM persists because its diagnostic entities are closely intertwined with too many interests that benefit from them. This comprehensive treatment should appeal to not only specialists but also anyone who is interested in how diagnoses of mental illness have evolved over the past seven decades--from unwanted and often imposed labels to resources that lead to valued mental health treatments and social services.

DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

Johns Hopkins University Press

The fascinating and controversial history of personality disorders. The concept of personality disorders rose to prominence in the early twentieth century and has consistently caused controversy among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists. In Personality Disorders, Allan V. Horwitz traces the evolution of defining these disorders and the historical dilemmas of attempting to mold them into traditional medical conceptions of disorder. Using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manualof Mental Disorders, or DSM, as a guide, Horwitz explores the group of conditions that make up personality disorders and considers when they have been tied to or separated from other types of mental illnesses. He also examines how these disorders have often entailed negative moral and cultural evaluations more focused on perceived social deviance than on actual medical conditions. Deep conflicts exist in a variety of disciplines in determining the nature of these disorders. During the twentieth century, a particularly sharp division arose between researchers who study personality disorders and the clinicians who treat them. Because researchers strive to develop general laws and clinicians attempt to understand individuals' specific problems, their values, methods, and goals often conflict. Synthesizing historical and contemporary scholarship, Horwitz examines controversies over the definitions and diagnoses of personality disorders and how the perception of these illnesses has changed over time.

Personality Disorders: A Short History of Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, and Other Types

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Horwitz, Allan V.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Horwitz, Allan V.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Horwitz, Allan V.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Social Control of Mental Illness (STUDIES ON LAW AND SOCIAL CONTROL)

What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture

What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture

Between Sanity and Madness: Mental Illness from Ancient Greece to the Neuroscientific Era

The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder

Creating Mental Illness

Creating Mental Illness

The Social Control of Mental Illness (Foundations of Sociology)

DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible

Personality Disorders: A Short History of Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, and Other Types