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Book synopsis

Why do 'maladies of the soul' such as hysteria, anxiety disorders, or depression wax and wane over time? Through a study of the history of psychiatry, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen provocatively argues that most mental illnesses are not, in fact, diseases but the product of varying expectations shared and negotiated by therapists and patients. With a series of fascinating historical vignettes, stretching from Freud's creation of false memories of sexual abuse in his early hysterical patients to today's promotion and marketing of depression by drug companies, Making Minds and Madness offers a powerful critique of all the theories, such as psychoanalysis and biomedical psychiatry, that claim to discover facts about the human psyche while, in reality, producing them. Borch-Jacobsen proposes such objectivizing approaches should be abandoned in favor of a constructionist and relativist psychology that recognizes the artifactual and interactive character of psychic productions instead of attempting to deny or control it.

Book details

Book category Books in English Society & social sciences Psychology Psychological theory & schools of thought

• Full title: Making Minds and Madness
• Subtitle: From Hysteria to Depression
• Author: Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 276
• EAN: 9780521888639
• ISBN: 0521888638
• ID: 02049241
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Weight: 7 g
• Dimensions: 254 × 179 × 18 mm
• Date of publishing: 28. May 2009

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