Perceptions of Mental Illness
Mental illness is a basic part of social life, and afflicts many people. Estimates of
schizophrenia in the population range from 0.6% to 3%, about 0.3% for affective
psychosis, between 8.0% and 15.0% for neurosis, and about 7% for personality
disorder. The total of these conditions ranges from 16% to 25% prevalence in the U.S.
population.
Public attention has always been important in mental illness. State mental health care
is one of the costliest items in any state budget, and frequently a major political issue
as well. Federal mental health programs beginning in the 1960s have created entirely
new forms of treatment and location of care. Most recently the fate of discharged
chronic patients in the community, as well as crimes committed by current patients
and ex-patients, have received widespread attention in cities throughout the nation.
Besides these structural issues, mental illness has always played a major role in
popular culture and basic human awareness. Mental illness has figured largely in
poetry, fiction, drama, art, and music. Many of the perceptions of mental illness form
key parts of childhood socialization and adult belief systems. The mad artist, the
frightening asylum, the mentally ill relative in the family closet, fear of a halfway
house in the neighborhood, the mental patient's terror and desolation -- all these are
part of the many perceptions of mental illness.
REQUIRED READING
Books to be purchased:










Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (Feminist Press)
Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6 (New American Library)
David Karp, Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the
Meanings of Illness (Oxford)
Elizabeth Ettorre and Elianne Riska, Gendered Moods: Psychotropics and
Society (Routledge)
Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted (Vintage)
Arthur Kleinman, Rethinking Psychiatry (Free Press)
Verta Taylor, Rock-a-bye-Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum
Depression (Routledge)
Pat Conroy, Prince of Tides
Peter Schaffer, Equus (Avon)
Tennessee Williams, Four Plays (New American Library)
1. Introduction

Slide and music presentation: Vincent Van Gogh and Don McLean
I. SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
2. The Experience of Madness



Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Sylvia Plath, "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams"(R)
Anonymous, "Labeling Someone Mentally Ill" (R)
Recommended:








Catherine Golden, ed., The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow
Wallpaper"
Rollo May, ed. Existence
Susan Sheehan, Is There No Place on Earth for Me?
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
R.D. Laing, The Divided Self
Barbara Gordon, I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can
Susan Baur, The Dinosaur Man: Tales of Madness and Enchantment from the
Back Ward
3. The Medical Model -- Critics and Defenders







Thomas Scheff, "Labeling Theory" (R)
Maurice Temerlin, "Suggestion Effects in Psychiatric Diagnoses" (R)
David Rosenhan, "On Being Sane in Insane Places" (R)
Walter R. Gove, "The Current Status of the Labeling Theory of Mental Illness
(R)
Bruce Link and Bruce Dohrenwend, "Epidemiology of Mental Disorders,"
from Sol Levine and Howard Freeman, ed., Handbook of Medical Sociology
(R)
Frigyes Karinthy, "Psychiatry" (R)
Allan Wheelis, "The League of Death" (R)
Film: "The Promise"
Recommended:





Thomas Scheff, Mental Illness and Social Process
Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness
Alan Horwitz, The Social Control of Mental Illness
Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of
Diagnosis
Peter Sedgwick, Psycho Politics: Laing, Foucault, Goffman, Szasz, and the
Future of Mass Psychiatry
4. Stigma and Responsibility

Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
-this week will include discussion of the film "The Promise"
5. Sex Roles and Social Construction

Verta Taylor, Rock-a-bye-Baby: Feminism, Self-Help, and Postpartum
Depression
6. The Personal Experience of Depression

David Karp, Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the
Meanings of Illness (Oxford)
Guest Speaker: David Karp (Professor of Sociology, Boston College)
7. Mental Health Institutions --History and Political-Economy




Andrew T. Scull, "Madness and Segregative Control: The Rise of the Insane
Asylum" (R)
Gerald Grob, "Marxian Analysis and Mental Illness," Bulletin of the History
of Psychiatry 1990 1:223-232 (R)
David Rothman, "The Enduring Asylum" (R)
Joseph P. Morrissey, Howard H. Goldman, and Lorraine V. Klerman, "Cycles
of Institutional Reform" (R)
Recommended:





Joseph P. Morrissey, Howard H. Goldman and Lorraine V. Klerman, eds., The
Enduring Asylum: Cycles of Institutional Reform at Worcester State Hospital.
Andrew Scull, Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant
Paul Lerman, Deinstitutionalization and the Welfare State
Robert Castel, Francoise Castel, and Anne Lovell, The Psychiatric Society
Phil Brown, The Transfer of Care: Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization and its
Aftermath
8. Social Structure of the Mental Hospital





Edgar Allan Poe, "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether"(R)
Anton Chekhov, Ward No. 6
Erving Goffman, Asylums (R)
Judi Chamberlin, "Inside the Mental Patients' Association" (R)
Raymond M. Weinstein, "The Mental Hospital from the Patients' Point of
View," (R)
Recommended:




Robert Perrucci, Circle of Madness
Morris Schwartz and Alfred Stanton, The Mental Hospital
Anselm Straus et al., Psychiatric Ideologies and Institutions
John K. Wing and George W. Brown, Institutionalism and Schizophrenia
Film: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
9. Gender, Social Control, and Psychotropic Medication

Elizabeth Ettorre and Elianne Riska, Gendered Moods: Psychotropics and
Society
10. Mental Health Policy - Community Mental Health, Deinstitutionalization,
and Beyond







David Mechanic and David Rochefort, "Deinstitutionalization: An Appraisal
of Reform," Annual Review of Sociology 1990 16:301-327 (R)
Theodore Marmor and Karyn Gill, "The Political and Economic Context of
Mental Health Care in the United States,"Journal of Health Policy, Politics,
and Law 1989 14:459-475 (R)
William Gronfein, "Psychotropic Drugs and the Origins of
Deinstitutionalization" Social Problems 1985:437-54 (R)
Phil Brown and Elizabeth Cooksey, "Mental Health Monopoly: Corporate
Trends in Mental Health Services" Social Science & Medicine 1989, 28:11291138 (R)
Leslie Scallet, "Paying for Public Mental Health Care." Health Affairs Spring
1990 117-124 (R)
Carl A. Taube, Howard H. Goldman, and David Salkever, "Medicaid
Coverage for Mental Illness: Balancing Access and Costs," Health Affairs
1990, Spring:5-18 (R)
Robert Dorwart, "Managed Mental Health Care: Myths and Realities in the
1990s" Hospital and Community Psychiatry 1990 41:1087-1091(R)
Recommended:

David Rochefort, From Poorhouses to Homelessness: Policy Analysis and
Mental Health Care
11. The Clinical Setting: Diagnosis and Interaction


Arthur Kleinman, Rethinking Psychiatry
Elizabeth Cooksey and Phil Brown, "Spinning on its Axes: DSM and the
Social Construction of Psychiatric Diagnoses" International Journal of Health
Services (in press) (R)
Recommended:


Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins, The Selling of DSM
Stuart Kirk and Herb Kutchins, Making Us Crazy: DSM -- The Psychiatric
Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders

Paula Caplan, They Say You're Crazy
II. MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE ARTS
12. Madness and Creativity

Kay Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic
Temperament - Introduction, Ch. 1-3 (pp. 3-90) (R)
Recommended:











George Becker The Mad Genius Controversy
Barry Panter et al., Creativity and Madness
Frank Barron, Creativity and Psychological Health
Edrita Fried, Artistic Productivity and Mental Health
D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb, The Key to Genius
Philip Sandblom, Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art,
and Music
Jane Piirto, Understanding Those Who Create
Arnold Ludwig, The Price of Greatness
Albert Rothenberg, Creativity and Madness
Mark Freeman, Finding the Muse: A Sociopsychological Inquiry into the
Conditions of Artistic Creativity
Vera Zolberg, Constructing a Sociology of the Arts
13. Madness in Art - Van Gogh


Meyer Schapiro, "Van Gogh's `Crows Over a Wheatfield'" (R)
Ellen Winner, Invented Worlds - excerpts (R)
Recommended:




J. Hulsker, Vincent and Theo Van Gogh: A Dual Biography
Ralph Pickford, Studies in Psychiatric Art
Marie Naevestad, The Colors of Rage and Love
Ernest Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art
14. Madness in Art: Portrayals of Madness by Established Artists

John McGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane Intro, Ch. 1-5 (R)
Slide presentations: Portrayals of madness by established artists
15. The Art of Mental Patients

John McGregor, The Discovery of the Art of the Insane Ch. 6-8 (R)
Slide presentation: the art of mental patients
film: "Prince of Tides"
F Apr. 17 Section Discussion
** Paper #3 Due - "Artistic Perspectives on Mental Illness"
16. Madness in Fiction - Madness in its Social Context

Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
Recommended:


















Lillian Feder, Madness in Literature
Leslie Rabkin, Psychopathology & Literature
John Vernon, The Garden and the Map: Schizophrenia in 20th Century
Literature and Culture
Anne Stevenson, Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath
Jesse Geller and Paul Spector, Psychotherapy: Portraits in Literature
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Jean Rhys, The Wide Sargasso Sea
Alan Roland, ed., Psychoanalysis, Creativity and Literature: A FrenchAmerican Inquiry
Shoshana Feldman, Writing and Madness:
Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis
Edward Dudley and Maximillian Novak, eds., The Wild Man Within: An
Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism
Ainsworth O'Brien-Moore, Madness in Ancient Literature
Hendrick Ruitenbeek, Psychoanalysis and Literature
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman
Writer & The Nineteenth Century Imagination
Max Byrd, Visits to Bedlam: Madness and Literature in the 18th Century
Michael DePorte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift, Sterne and Augustan
Ideas of Madness
Penelope Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in
Middle English Literature
Marianne Yalom, Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness
17. Madness in Drama


Tennessee Williams, Suddenly Last Summer
Peter Schaffer, Equus
Recommended:





William Shakespeare, King Lear
Luigi Pirandello, Henry IV
William Inge, Splendor in the Grass
Henry Somerville, Madness in Shakespearean Tragedy
Robert Reid, Bedlam on the Jacobean Stage