Pyschiatry and the Business of Madness: An Ethical and Epistemological Accounting

PSYCHIATRY AND THE BUSINESS OF MADNESS: AN ETHICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL ACCOUNTING Bonnie Burstow London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 In her new book, Psychiatry and The Business Of Madness, Bonnie Burstow raises a series of critical questions for the future of psychiatry as a legitimate branch of and as a capitalist industry designed to make profit: How has psychiatry managed to become globalized, and in the process, so completely naturalized that we forget to question its mere existence, never mind the ways in which it operates? How are we implicated in the process of physical and chemical incarcerations planned and implemented by the business of psychiatry? In answering these questions and a host of others, and in challenging the political economy of madness, Burstow argues for a world without psychiatry geared towards a collective existence with care and cooperation. Burstow prods the belly of the beast and forces him to vomit through the pages of a book that is a passionate indictment of the barbaric nature of psychiatry and simultaneously a celebration of collective care and accountability for each other. Burstow unravels the political nature of patriarchy while rudely undressing the class-based society engaged in the business of producing madness. (1) She crafts and historicizes the anti-psychiatry and anti-patriarchy revolutions simultaneously by informing the reader about the operationalization and construction of madness diagnosis and its connection to the historical oppression of women (e.g., witch-hunting). In 1860, for instance, she reveals that women could be admitted to a psychiatric hospital/prison by just a request from their husbands--usually on the of noncompliance. Burstow not only discloses the nature of psychiatry as an established branch of medicine, but also distinguishes between decisions and scientific findings which is an indicator that science in not neutral but always mediated by social relations of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Her compelling examples include classifications of mental illnesses as well as grounds for diagnosis and admission. Psychiatry and the Business of Madness is a significant political and historical contribution to the field of Disability Studies for it does not fail to shed light on the history/historicity and politics of psychiatry as a business, eugenics as a grease for the wheels of modern medicine and the state--beneficiary of it all as a capitalist apparatus. Burstow redefines the word research and indicates how research has contributed to producing, institutionalizing, and punishing undesirables, which include the insane and the disabled. This book is a blatant declaration of combat against psychiatric assault and patriarchal organization of human thinking and acting. Reading this book, I was gripped by a feeling that it will mark a politically-necessary moment in the history of Women's and Gender Studies as well as Disability Studies/Mad Studies. Further reading convinced me that this book is certainly a challenge for ahistorical and apolitical reading of radical thinking in Humanities and Social Sciences in general, and adult educational theories concerning women's liberation and psychiatry's abolishment in particular. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.